
REVIEW 

OF THE 

SLAVE aiJESTION, 

EXTRACTED 

From the American Quarterly Review, Dec. 1832; 
BASED ON THE SPEECH OF TH: MARSHALL, OP FAUdUIER: 

IS THE ESSENTIAL HINDRANCE 

TO THE PROSPERITY OF THE 



SLAVE-HOLDING STATES; 



WITH PARTICUL.AR REFERENCE TO VIRGINIA. 



Though applicable to other States where Slavery exists. 



TB^ ^ '^asjcaasriiiisytt 



RICHMOND: 

Printed by T. W. White, opposite the Bell-Tavern. 

1833. 




From the Richmond Whis;- Jan. 3, 1833. 



REVIEW OF THE Sl-AVERY" Q^UESTIOBi". 

In the American Quarterly for December, appears an article 
on this great subject, of peculiar ability — the most calm and phi- 
losophical spirit of enquiry — and of reasoning, to our poor judg- 
ment, unanswerable. 

The article is based on the Speech of Mr. Marshall of Fau- 
quier, and its design, says the Boston Courier, " is to show by a 
clear induction of facts, that slavery is the essential liindrance to 
the prosperity of the slavg-holding States, and the necessity of 
prompt action to check the palpable mischief they are suftering 
from it." The subject, says the same paper, is treated with par- 
ticular reference to the situation of Virginia ; but it is obvious 
(hat the doctrine he establishes is equally applicable to all the 
States, where slavery exists. The author declines, wiseh% to 
consider the subject with reference to the iniquity of slavery in 
itself, asserting what is undoubtedly true, that the holding of 
slaves as the south is conditioned, argues not the slightest degree 
of moral turpitude, and that the average condition of the slave in 
Virginia, is by no means a bad one. [He might have added, 
that it was positively, nay incomparably better than that of the 
labouring population in Ireland, and various parts of Europe.] 
He demonstrates the effects of slavery to be: inanimation of pub- 
lic spirit — destruction of the spirit of industry in the free popu- 
lation — the degradation of labour itself— ruin of agriculture, by 
a wasteful mode of cultivation — interposing obstacles to the im- 
provement of the soil — and the encouragement of habits and opi- 
nions, destructive of economy and enlerprize. 

"The writer then states the conditions on which a slave-holding State may be a 
prosiDerous one, and shows that Viroinia has scai-cely a single requisite to make her 
so. None of the States possesses them but imperfectly, except Louisiana. Those 
conditions are an inexhaustible soil — a small leriitory— a climate, the products of 
which can be reared in but a few spots on the globe^ and for which there is a perma- 
nent demand — and wliich is insupportable by white labourers." — Boston Courier. 

There are a thousand reflections in this article fraught with 
wisdom and forecast. The essay of Professor Dew, vye learn, 
has been studiously circulated, and we hope measures will be ta- 
ken to secure an equal circulation for this, in our opinion, far 
/fiore worthy of it. At a more convenient season, we shall trans- 
fer liberally to our columns, from both articles. 

The author is Jesse Burton Harrison, Esq., late of Virginia, 
now of New Orleans; a gentleman destined to reflect honour upon 
his native soil, and to elevate the American reputation. 



ABOLIIMON aUESTION. 



FROM THE AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW, DEC. 1832. 



The Speech of Thomas Marshall, in the House of Delegates of 
Virginia, on the Aholition of Slavery. Delivered, Friday, Ja- 
nuary 20, 1832. Richmond: pp. 12. 

The debate in the Legislature of Virginia at its last session is, 
beyond all question, the event which most materially affects the 
prospects of negro slavery in the United States. Every thing 
tells of a spirit that is busy inspecting the very foundations of 
society in Virginia — a spirit new, suddenly created, and vaster in 
its grasp than any hitherto called forth in her history. There 
is a serious disposition to look the evil of slavery (nothing less!) 
in the face, and to cast about for some method of diminishing or 
extirpating it. Causes not now needful to be named, have given 
birth to this disposition, so little to have been anticipated two 
years ago. The possibility of ridding Virginia of the evil of 
slavery in our generation, in that of our children, or of our grand- 
children, is suddenly made the .legitimate subject of temperate 
debate. We shall presume to ipbak of it therefore in a temper 
of becoming gravity, and we hope without danger of giving of- 
fence to any one. 

It matters not, though a majority of the people of Virginia be 
not, in the first moment, willing to adopt or even to consider plans 
already prepared for diminishing the mischiefs of slavery. It 
matters not, though it were conceded, that all the plans suggest- 
ed last winter in the House of Delegates, were marked with the 
crudeness of inexperience, and the inadvertence of haste, and 
would all require to be abandoned for others more mature. It 
matters not, though it were conceded, that a becoming regard 
for public decency forbade any final step on so perilous a subject 
in the very first year of its agitation. We fix our eyes on the 
single circumstance, that the public mind of Virginia permitted, 
nay encouraged, the open deliberations of the General Assembly, 
for weeks, on the momentous topic never before thought fit to 
be mentioned but in a whisper. The first blow has been struck ; 
the greatest achievement that the cause of emancipation admitted, 
was then effected. Le grand mot est lache — the great word is 
spoken out, and can never be recalled. Debate and sp"eculation 
are on the instant made legitimate. The secret pulsation of so 



6 Slavery Q^uestion in Virginia. 

many hearts, sick with the despair of an evil they dared not pro- 
pose to remedy, has now found a voice, and the wide air has rung 
with it. 

We rejoice that we live to see this snl^ct thrown into the vast 
field, in which are to be found so many of the prime interests of 
the human race — the same from which the ancient tragic poets 
derived their groundwork: the warfare between liberty and ne- 
cessity, or more accurately, the sublime strife between the desira- 
ble and the actual. We rejoice, that full of doubts, embarrass- 
ments, and dangers, as is the thought of attacking the evil, as 
near alike to the attributes of Fate as seems its defiance of oppo- 
sition, the obdurate unchangeableness of it even in degree, yet 
it is thrown open to speculation and experiment, and now stands 
fairly exposed to assault from tlie great Crusaders which have 
thus far redeemed our mortal condition from barbarism and mise- 
ry — the unconquerable free will and undying hope. No mortal 
evil can forever withstand this open war; these its antagonist 
principles will be like the undercurrent at sea, "that draws a 
thousand waves unto itself," will strive against obstacle, repair 
disaster, and convert all the contemporary events into good for 
their cause. Recent occurrences in the palitical history of fqreign 
countries abundantly exemplily this fact. 

Tiie seal is now broken. We exhort the sons of Virginia to 
toil for the diminution of this evil, with all the prudence, the 
delicacj', and gravity requisite in the application of a great public 
remedy to a wide-spread disease. And in the worst event, let 
them rest assured that histor}' has few places more enviable than 
would be the lot of the last advocate, who, left without allies, 
should come, in the grand langUfge of Milton's prose, "through 
the chance of good or of evil report, to be the sole advocate of 
A discountenanced truth."* 

We fix not our expectations so much on legislative enactments : 
as far as these are compulsory and proceed only from a division 
in the minds of men, we deprecate them. But we direct our an- 
ticipations to the general will of the people of the state. Let rea- 
son and persuasion be the instruments of promoting a voluntary 
action. Until not merely a majority, but a great majority of the 
freemen of Virginia be convinced, persuaded, moved to demand 
liberation from the ruin that is consuming the land, there will be 
unworthy rudeness and indecorum in bringing in the violence of 
a new statute to begin the work of purification. She is now in 
the breathing space after the first mention of it; the spontaneous 
burst of agitated feeling of last winter shall either perish, or re- 
solve itself into a wise, patient, judicious movement. The sum- 
mer will have witnessed, by the temper it has matured in her, 
whether Virginia is capable — not of deep sensibility to supposed 
claims of patriotism ; that the world knows her to possess — not of 

* Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 7 

gusts of enthusiasm for purposes that are lifted above selfish cu- 
pidity ; all, who know her, have witnessed her passionate attach- 
ment to abstract truth, her susceptibility of lasting emotions in 
its behalf, and her readiness for every mode of self-denial, of 
privation, and self-sacrifice. But we are to witness whether, re- 
calling her affections from the distant objects to which they have 
certainly been too exclusively devoted, she is adequate to manage 
her own possible destiny for good ; whether she is framed for 
that high sort of civil prudence which knows how to proje-t a 
vast plan of heroic justice, that it will require generations of men 
of the same temper to execute. We do not hesitate to believe 
that the ultimate result is not dubious: we repose the fullest con- 
fidence in Virginia, the mother of so many colonized common- 
wealths. 

Unhappy America! how portentous a fate has proved hers ! It 
was not enough that the dowry which she brought to Europe 
when first discovered, the bountiful millions which her mines of 
gold and silver yielded in the first hundred years, served only to 
enable Ferdinand, Charles V., and Philip II., to establish the In- 
quisition, and to crush the freedom of conscience by long and 
bloody wars, which nothing but American gold could have sup- 
ported ! It was not enough that her fine race of generous barba- 
rians, (the finest the world ever saw) were to perish before the 
face of civilizing man ! But she must suffer too, the pollution of 
being used as if discovered solely for the wo of Africa ! To the 
discovery of this continent is due the existence in the world to-day 
of a single slave with a Christian master. 

It was in 1620, thirteen 3ears after the first settlement of James- 
town, that a Dutch vessel from the Coast of Guinea sailed up 
James River, and brought the first slave into British America. — 
We can almost see the hateful form of the slaver, as with her 
cargo of crime and misery, " rigged with curses," she bursts into 
the silent Chesapeake. We see her keel ploughing the pure, be- 
cause yet free, waters, and now nearing the English plantations. 
Fatal, fatal ship !— What does she there ? Can it indeed be that 
she comes (and so soon!) to pour the deadliest of hereditary woes 
into our cradle ? How durst the loathsome freight she bears, the 
accursed shape of slavery intrude itself, of all lands on the earth, 
upon this vestal soil .'' How thrust itself among a race of Anglo- 
Saxon men in the seventeenth century ? how bring its deformity 
athwart the bold and noble sweep of the common law, to mar it 
all .f* how mix its curses up (to a greater or less degree in all the 
British Colonies,) with the mass of all our acts, at our hearths, 
our public councils, and our altars, and bring pollution to our 
childhood and decrepitude to our youth ? On a land set apart by 
Providence for the best growth of manhood — where Magna Char- 
ta, the Petition of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights, 
and last, but greatest, the profession in their fulness and sincerity 
of the grand, transcendant rights of reason and nature, of liberty 



8 Slavery (Question, in T^irginia. 

and equality, were to have their deepest roots ; — a land the 
world's refuge and the world's hope ; — how shall we not weep 
when the ineradicable seeds are here planted, that shall curse 
with contradiction and inconsistency all the height of its pride, 
and make the manly and dilated heart, in the midst of its triumph 
at one side of its condition, faint and sick, sick to the core with 
the dust and ashes of the other side ! 

We have put the truly statesmanlike speech of the son of the 
Chief Justice of the United States at the head of this article, be- 
cause we believe it expresses the opinions of a majority of re- 
flecting men in Virginia, and because it coincides more nearly 
with our own views than any of the other speeches in that de- 
bate. If it be inferior in fervid eloquence to some of the others, 
it possesses the rarer merit of coolness, impartiality, decision, and 
uncommon political sagacity. We cannot adequately express the 
satisfaction its perusal gave us, without running into panegyric, 
which we are sure would be little acceptable to him. Mr. Mar- 
shall voted as well against Mr. T. J. Randolph's motion for sub- 
mitting the question of abolition at once to the people, and Mr. 
Preston's, declaring immediate action by the legislature then sit- 
ting to be expedient, as against Mr. Goode's motion to discharge 
the select coumiittee from the consideration of all petitions, me- 
morials, and resolutions which had for their object the manumis- 
sion of persons held in servitude under the laws of Virginia, and 
thus declare it not expedient to legislate at all on the subject. As 
regards the two first motions, Mr. ]\iarshall believed that the 
public mind was not yet preparg^J for the question of abolition ; 
that the members of that session were not elected in reference to 
it ; and that there were other modes of ascertaining public senti- 
ment on that great question, less agitating than would the forcing 
it upon the people for promiscuous discussion. He objected fur- 
ther to l\lr. Randolph's proposition (which embraced onl}' one 
plan of abolition — that fixing the year 1840 as the time after 
which all slaves born should be declared public property,) be- 
cause it was too specific, and instead of merely asserting a prin- 
ciple, ofi'ered a peculiar plan obnoxious to many objections. But 
he had still greater objections to Mr. Goode's motion to dismiss 
the subject wholly from the consideration of the house, with the 
implied understanding that the legislature decidedly repelled all 
invitations to deliberate on the possibility of diminishing the 
evils of slavery. He declared himself entirely convinced that 
slavery was fruitful of many woes to Virginia, that a general 
sense of insecurity pervaded the state, and that the citizens were 
deeply impressed with the conviction that something must be 
done. He said that there were sure indications that some action 
is imperatively required of the legislature by the people — that 
the evil has attained a magnitude, which demands all the skill 
and energy of prompt and able legislation. He follows up this 
opinion with much valuable illustration and a number of useful 



FH: 



Slavery Question in Virginia, 9 

practical suggestions. Without entirely assenting to the objec- 
tions of Mr. Marshall to the two first motions above named, we 
are delighted with the general tone of his remarks. 

Before beginning to unfold more fully our own views of the 
present exigency in -Virginia, we take occasion to declare dis- 
tinctly that our purpose is not by overcharged pictures of the 
iniquity of slavery, or the cruel lot of the slaves, to raise a storm 
of gratuitous indignation in the minds of the people of the United 
States against Virginia. We believe that there is not the slight- 
est moral turpitude in holding slaves under existing circumstances 
in the south. We know too that the ordinary condition of slaves 
in Virginia is not such as to make humanity weep for his lot. — 
Our solicitations to the slaveholders, it will be perceived, are 
founded but little on the miseries of the blacks. We direct our- 
selves almost exclusively to the injuries slavery inflicts on the 
whites. And of these evils suflered by the whites, the evil con- 
sequences of practising the immorality of slaveholding will not 
be our mark. Reproach and recrimination on such a subject 
would answer no good purpose ; it would naturally provoke de- 
fiance from the slaveholders. All the eloquent invectives of the 
British abolitionists have not made one convert in the West In- 
dies. This is no part of our humour. It is our object to lure 
Virginia onward in her present hopeful state of mind. We mean 
to confine every word we write to Virginia. The whole scope 
of this article will be to show the necessity of her promptly doing 
something to check the palpable mischiefs her^ prosperity is suffer- 
ing from slavery. We design to show that all her sources of 
economical prosperity are poisoned by slavery, and we shall hint 
at its moral evils only as they occasion or imply destruction to 
the real prosperity of a nation. Unless we first make this posi- 
tion impregnable, we shall ask no one to sacrifice merely to ab- 
stract humanity and justice. Nor shall we insist on Virginia's 
beginning action on this momentous subject,*intil we have shown 
that her genuine ultimate interest will be promoted by it. The 
best way of persuading men of this world to deeds which in- 
volve the sacrifice of present interests, is to convince them that 
a greater prospective interest may be thereby secured. We shall 
strive then to procure the concurrence of self-interest as well as 
the approbation of humanity. Hence, even should we succeed 
in making out our case as to Virginia, it will be instantly re- 
marked that we have said very little that will touch South Caro- 
lina and Georgia, and scarcely any thing applicable to Louisiana, 
Mississippi and Alabama. If the prosperity of any of these is 
founded in circumstances of soil, climate, products, &,c., of such y 

nature and degree, as that it will not sink under the precarious 
specific (neck or nothing) of slave labour, a la bonne heure — 
let them go on. This is undoubtedly the case more or less of 
the sugar, cotton, and rice plantation states. But it is not the case 
of Virginia. We propose to treat 
2 



10 Slavery (Question in Virginia. 

I. Of the injury slavery does to the prosperity of Virginia. 
Let us cursorily indicate some of the evils which the experience 
of the United States shows to be consequent on slavery under 
ordinary circiunstances, some of which Virginia has suflered in 
common with other states, and of some of which she has been 
peculiarly the victim. 1. An inertness of most of the springs of 
prosperity — a want of what is commonly called public spirit. — 
2. Where slave labour prevails, it is scarcely practicable for free 
labour to* co-exist with it to any great extent. Not that the lat- 
ter would not deserve the preference, both for cheapness and ef- 
ficiency, but that many obvious causes conspire to prevent the 
rivalship being perseveringly sustained. Freedom being itself 
regarded as a privilege in a nation that has slaves, there is a na- 
tural tendency to consider exemption from tnanual labour as the 
chief mark of elevation above tlie class of slaves. In a republic 
this tendency is vastly increased. A disposition to look on all 
manual labour as menial and degrading, may safely be set down 
as a distemper of the most disastrous kind. We shall not dilate 
on this. It must instantly be admitted that nothing can compen- 
sate a nation for the destruction of all the virtues which flow from 
mere industry. Virginia has experienced this most signall}' : had 
her slave labour been ten times as productive as it has been, and 
grant that she possesses all the lofty qualities ever claimed for 
her in their highest degree, she would still have been the loser 
by contracting this ruinous disposition. Nothing but the most 
abject necessity wauld lead a white man to hire himself to work 
in the fields under the overseer, and we must say that we cannot 
refuse to sympathize with the free labourer who finds it irksome 
to peform hard work by the side of a slave. — 3. Agriculture is 
the best basis of national wealth. "Arts," says that eminent 
farmer Mr. John Taylor of Caroline, " improve the works of 
nature; when they injure it they are not arts but barbarous cus- 
toms. It is the ofiiae of agriculture as an art not to impoverish, 
but to fertilize the soil and make it more useful than in its natu- 
ral state. Such is the efl'ect of every species of agriculture which 
can aspire to the name of an art." Now it is a truth that an m- 
proving system of agriculture cannot be carried on by slaves. 
The negligent wasteful liabits of slaves who are not interested in 
the estate, and the exacting cupidity of transient overseers who 
are interested in extorting from the earth the greatest amount of 
production, render all slave agriculture invariably exhausting. 
How many plantations worked by slaves are there in Virginia 
which are not perceptibly sufiering the sure process of exhaus- 
tion ? Perhaps not one, except a iew on the water courses, com- 
posed of the alluvial soils which are virtually inexhaustible. The 
uncertainty of the profits of a crop generally deters the planters 
in Virginia from giving standing wages to their overseers — in- 
deed, it has too often happened that the salary of the overseer 
has absorbed all the proceeds. Hence it is usual to give hinij in- 



^m 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 1 1 

stead of salary, a share of the crop. The murderous effects of 
this on the fertiUty of tlie soil may well be conceived. An estate 
submitted to overseers entitled to a share of the crojD, (who are 
changed of course, almost yearly) suffers a thousandfold more 
than would English farms put out on leases of one or two years 
to fresh lessees. Twenty-one 3'ears is thought too short a term 
there. — 4. It is a fact that no soil but the richest, and that in effect 
inexhaustible, can be profitably cultivated by slaves. In the Le- 
gislature of Virginia it was repeatedly said that her lands were 
poor, and for that reason none but slaves could be brought to 
work them well. On the contrary, poor lands and those of mo- 
derate fertility can never repay the expense of slave labour, or 
bear up under the vices' of that slovenly system. — 5. In modern 
times, in most cases where slave labour prevails, it has been found 
in plantation states and colonies. There are many obvious rea- 
sons wii}', if profitable any where, it must only be there. Now, 
if this be the case, it would appear that slavery to be profitable 
is essentially incompatible with a dense population — at all events, 
with a relatively dense population of freemen. No country can 
afford to be given up exclusively to agriculture in the shape of 
plantation tillage, or to devote the entire attention of all the men 
it rears to that occupation, except its soil be extremely fertile and 
its products of the richest nature. Under other circumstances, 
the soil and products not making adequate returns, there is a 
vast waste of capabilities for other purposes, which the surface 
of many countries might well answer. — 6. It seems agreed among 
the economists of the south that slaves are unfit for the business 
of manufactures. A most sensible essay was published in Phila- 
delphia in 1827 by Dr. Jones, afterwards superintendent of the 
Patent Office at Washington, to show that slaves are not necessa- 
rily unfit for this employment. We were persuaded at the time, 
that, if his position were true, it would prove the most import- 
ant of all suggestions in an economical view, to Virginia. Ii has 
surprised us, indeed, that the advocates of the perpetuity of sla- 
very in Virginia have not seen the immense advantage of such 
an argument to their side of the question. But the entire cur- 
rent of opinion in the south (led by an invincible sentiment of 
hostility to the protective system) is that states where slave la- 
bour prevails, and where the whole capital for labour is vested in 
slaves, cannot manufacture. It will need no words to show what 
an injury this voluntary disability inflicts on a country which 
may happen to have the most felicitous capacities for manufac- 
tures. — 7. Where slave labour prevails, it would appear that the 
rearing a large class of skilful mechanics is greatly discouraged. 
The slaves themselves of course never make mechanics except 
of the coarsest description. Although the whites in the cities 
are not entirely averse to becoming artisans, yet, in the country, 
the natural policy of the rich planters to have mechanics among 
their slaves to do all the needful business on their estates, de- 



12 Slavery (Question in Virginid. 

prives the white mechanics of their ciiief encouragement to per*- 
feet themselves in their trades, diminishes tlie demand for their 
services, and generally has the efl'ect of expelling them from one 
neighbourhood to another until they finally expatriate tliem- 
selves. — 8. Slave labour is, without controversy, dearer than 
free. It suffices to state, that in the one case you have a class of 
labourers that have a direct interest in doing and saving as little 
as possible, so that they barely escape punishment; in the other 
a class, every member of which has a direct interest in producing 
and saving as much as possible. But this position is too well es- 
tablished to justify any one in an argument to prove it. The ca- 
tegories wherein the contrary holds true are cumulatively: a. it 
must be in a plantation country; h. it must be in a soil extremely 
and inexhaustibly fertile ; c. where the products are of the great- 
est value; d. and after all, it must be where white men cannot 
endure the climate and the nature of the cultivation. — 9. The ex- 
perience of the United States has shown that slavery decidedly 
discourages immigration (to use Dr. Southey's word) from foreign 
countries into the sections of country where it is prevalent. It 
is not a sufficient answer to this to say that the emigrants are in 
general allured to the United States by the temptation of the rich 
country in the west, so that slavery cannot be said to repel them 
from the southern states. It is not true of the best emigrants 
that come to our shores, that they are intent on pushing into the 
pathless forest, to be there banished from all the blessings of a 
settled country. This is in fact the positive passion of none but 
the hardy native pioneers, the Boones of Vermont, of New York, 
and Virginia. Tiie Germans, for example, who are perhaps the 
most valuable of the emigrants to America, are not people who 
would prefer to make their home in the midst of the extreme dis- 
comforts and often cruel privations which the pioneers undergo. 
Besides, what repels all those emigrants who are not agriculturists, 
and whose occupations lead them among crowds of men ? Of immi- 
gration into the slave-holding States, except in some of the western 
States, where the principle of slavery is not yet predominant, it 
may be said there is none. The emigrants understand that their 
hope of employment there is forestalled, that the only labour 
wanted is indigenous to the soil; they feel that that labour is in- 
compatible with their own, and they shrink from the idea of giv- 
ing their children, who are to live by manual labour, a home in 
a slave-labour land, while fair regions, dedicated as well to do- 
mestic as to civil freedom, tempt their adventurous footsteps. 
With this evil may be classed the tendency of the whites of these 
States to emigrate from the soil of their birth. — 10. Slavery begets 
inevitably a train of habits and opinions which, to say the least, 
are destructive of all those springs of prosperity which depend 
on economy, frugality, enterprise. Young people bred up to be 
maintained by slaves are apt to imbibe improvident habits. Of 
its favourable operation on the spirit of liberty in the whites, we 



Slavery Qu€stio7i in P'irginia. 13 

are not disposed to question the well known opinion of Mr. 
Burke: the passage we refer to, is itself an evidence of the pro- 
found knowledge lie possessed of the human heart. We consider 
it truer, however, of the spirit of libejty in its aspect of resistance 
to foreign oppression: mi its home aspect it is, we think, compa- 
ratively just. But as relates to its operation in equalizing the 
whites with each other, we throw out the suggestion without note 
.or comment, that no property gives rise to greater inequalities 
than slave property. We question, too, whether it could well 
be maintained that the beau ideal of a nabob — (we i^se the word 
in its fair, not invidious sense,) — endow him with nobleness of 
soul, sensibility, the utmost delicacy of honour, generosity, and 
hospitality — is tiie finest specimen of our species. There are many 
solid and essential virtues (wholly disconnected with those named) 
which could not so well be dis|)ensed with as some of those, in 
going to make up the being of whom par excellence nature might 
stand up and say " this is a man." 

We can now venture to define pretty accurately what sort of 
a country that must be, which having regard solely to the eco- 
nomical principles, is adapted to be for a long term of years a 
prosperous slave-labour Stale. It must possess an extremely 
rich soil, hence under most circumstances be a comparatively 
small country, (otherwise the greater the difficulty of finding a 
uniformly fine soil, and consequently the impossibility of making 
the ivhole State flourish), in a latitude the products of wl)ich, from 
their scarcity in the world, the permanent demand for them, and 
the possibility of rearing them in but few spots on the globe, are 
sure of a market at high prices, where the culture of such crops 
requires that the slaves be worked together in bodies, so that the 
constant supervision necessary over them may be performed by 
a few whites, and finally in a climate so nearly tropical, or other- 
wise precarious, as to make the exposure and toil insupportable 
to free (say white) labourers. A country uniting all these re- 
quisites may be prosperous with slave labour. It possesses cer- 
tain sources of wealth., by the help of which it may dispense with 
many others, that are the necessary resource of countries of mo- 
derate fertility, and which are under different general circum- 
stances. Such a country seems to need the moral-econonomical 
springs less. It will of necessity contain a sparse white popula- 
tion, but it may be formidable in war from its superior relative 
wealth. The countries growing cotton, rice, and the sugar cane, 
bountifully, are of this description. For aught we know, Brazil 
may fall under the definition. The principal West India islands 
appear to be entitled to expect prosperity, (supposing no adverse 
adventitious circumstances) but Louisiana unites all the requisites 
more perfectly perhaps than any other country. South Caroli- 
na and Georgia do it but imperfectly, on account of there being 
so large a portion of both of them to which such description 
would not at all apply ; Alabama and Mississippi do more per- 



14 Slavery Question in Virginia. 

fectly than tliey. But it may boldly be said tbat Virginia pos- 
sesses scarcely a single requisite to jnake a prosperous slave- 
labour Slate. 

She has not the inexhaustible rich soils : ber earth originally 
yielded fair returns to hard labour judiciously directed, but all 
such soils, as she has learned by bitter experience, are fated, un- 
der the hands of slaves, to deterioration down to utter barrenness. 
She has too large a territory : the curse of the presence of 
slaves and the monopoly of labour in their hands, is all over the 
State; the spots really adapted for profitable slave labour are few 
and scattered. She has not the sort of products : only a small 
part of the State produces cotton; the culture of tobacco, which 
was originally the general staple of Old Virginia Proper, after 
destroying immense tracts of good lands, is shrinking into a very 
diminished compass, and scarcely repays the cost of production 
under the average prices of the last fifteen years. If any one 
would cast his eye over the list of the Tobacco Inspections es- 
tablished by law, in the revised code of Virginia, he would smile 
to see places mentioned for inspection warehouses, in quarters 
of Virginia where no man has ever seen a hundred weight of to- 
bacco. Besides this, there is an unlimited competition springing 
up around her, to reduce prices to nothing. With regard to the 
crops of tobacco of the western states, we can say with confidence, 
that there is a regular annual increase in quantity, with great im- 
provement in its curing and management ; so that it is fast taking 
the place of Virginia tobacco for consumption in the leaf in the 
north of Europe, and as strips in Great*Britain. The article of 
tobacco is now cultivated in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, 
Missouri, Tennessee, and in Canada, as well as Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. The quantity raised is alto- 
gether too great for consumption. The other products of Vir- 
ginia are the ordinary growth of all temperate, and most northern 
regions. She has not the climate which would put slaves on the 
vantage ground above whites: every part of her territory is 
adapted to the men of all climates, and she has not a foot of 
soil which natm-e declares that none but blacks shall cultivate, nor 
a product the cultivation of which demands lives and labours baser 
than those of white men. Tobacco is notoriously cultivated with 
success by whites in any part of the world, which is temperate 
enough to grow it. It is then a total miscalculation in every 
point of view— a false position for Virginia to have allotted to 
lierself the exclusive labour of slaves. 

But appeal is made to the history of the economy of Virginia 
to contradict this assertion. Is it demanded for instance, why 
Virginia should prosper before the Revolution as she did, with 
her slave labour, if there be a fatal error in her adoption of sla- 
very.? We may answer, that there is no great mystery in that. 
Virginia while a colony never did furnish the miracles of great 
and sudden fortunes which the West India and South Carolina 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 16 

nabobs used to exbibit in England. Adam Smiib in bis day 
made liiis remark. Al tbat time fine tobacco was an article only 
grown in Virginia and Maryland, and tbe prices were relatively 
to the times very high; whereas now and for all future time, a 
competition wholly beyond the conception of that day has com- 
pletely revolutionized tlie market. But admit tliat the colony 
was very prosperous: if from this it is meant to argue that Vir- 
ginia may again be so under the same system, we hope it will 
not at least be denied that the Revolution found almost all the 
lands which had been opened nearly or quite exhausted, showing 
plainly that the preceding hundred years had been passed in fits 
of profitable planting from the frequent resort to successive new 
lands. Mr. Taylor of Caroline had understood that 60,000 hogs- 
heads of tobacco were exported from Virginia, when the whole 
population did not exceed 150,000. Had the fertility of the coun- 
try by possibility remained undiminished, (as he says it would, 
if her slave agriculture had been any thing else than " a barbarous 
custom," not an art,) Virginia ought in 1810 to have exported 
240,000 hogsheads, or their equivalent in other produce, and at 
present nearlj' the double of that. Thus the agricultural exports 
of Virginia in 1810 would, at the estimated prices of the Custom 
House at that time, have been seventeen millions of dollars, and 
now at least thirty-four, while it is known that they are not of 
late j'ears greater than from three to five millions! This will 
at once show that the great crops of the colonial times were 
forced, or we way say exaggerated by the possession of means, 
which will never again be in her hands. 

The fact that the whole agricultural products of the State at 
present, do not exceed in value the exports eighty or ninety 
years ago, when it contained not a sixth of the population, and 
when not a third of the surface of the State (at present Virginia) 
was at all occupied, is however a very striking proof of the de- 
cline of its agriculture. What is now the productive value of an 
estate of land and negroes in Virginia.^ We state as the result 
of extensive inquiry, embracing the last fifteen years, that a very 
great proportion of the larger plantations, with from fifty to one 
hundred slaves, actually bring their proprietors in debt at the 
end of a short term of years, notwithstanding what would once 
in Virginia have been deemed very sheer economy; that much 
the larger part of the considerable landholders are content, if they 
barely meet their plantation expenses without a loss of capital ; 
and that, of those who make any profit, it will in none but rare 
instances average more than one to one and a half per cent, on 
the capital invested. The case is not materially varied with the 
smaller proprietors. Mr. Randolph of Roanoke, whose sayings 
have so generally the racihess and the truth of proverbs, has re- 
peatedly said in Congress, that the time was coming when the 
masters would run away from the slaves and be advertised by 
them in ihe^ public papers. A decided improvement in the Vir- 



16 Slavery Question in Virginia. 

giiiia system is taking place in some parts of the State, which 
consists in the abandonment of the culture of tobacco for that of 
wheat, Indian corn, &.C., which can be produced on soil too poor 
for tobacco, requires fewer labourers i<iid will not be so apt to 
reduce the fertility of the soil still lower. This is a judicious 
thing in itself, but here again recurs the truth we have ah-eady 
set forth: plantations with such products as these never can be 
profitably managed with slave labour. Wheat and corn will not 
do for this ; let the planter turn his sons in to work his lands, and 
then these products will suffice. Tobacco was the only article 
which ever could by possibility justify the expense of slave labour 
in Virginia ; and now we see that the wiser planters are to a great 
degree withdrawing their lands from it. 

There is however one way in which capital invested in slaves 
may be said to be productive. We will now let the reader into 
a secret of slave-holding economy. The only form in which it 
can safely be said that slaves on a plantation are profitable in 
Virginia, is in the multiplication of their number by births. If 
the proprietor, beginning witli a certain number of negroes, can 
but keep them for a iew years from the hands of the sheriff 
or the slave trader, though their labour may have yielded him 
not a farthing of nett revenue, he finds that gradually but surely, 
his capital stock of negroes multiplies itself, and yields, if no- 
thing else, a palpable interest of young negroes. While very 
young they occasion small expense, but they render none or 
small service ; when grown up, their labour, as we have already 
seen, hardly does more than balance the expense they occasion. 
The process of multiplication will not in this way advance the 
master towards the point of a nett revenue ; he is not the richer 
in income with the fifty slaves than with twenty. Yet these young 
negroes have their value : and what value? The value of the 
slaves so added to his number is the certain price for which they 
will at any time sell to the southern trader. Should the human- 
ity of the proprietor, however, and his rare fortune in keeping 
out of debt, prevail on him never to treat his slaves as live stock 
for traffic, he finds himself incumbered with the same unproduc- 
tive burden as before. Tliat master alone finds productive value 
in his increase of slaves, who chooses to turn the increase of his 
capital, at regular intervals, into money at the highest market 
price ! There are, we make haste to say, very many masters 
with whom it is a fixed rule never to sell a slave, except for in- 
corrigibly bad character, so long as the pressure of necessity does 
not compel it. There are some who would feel it to be the wan- 
ton breach of a tie next in sanctity to the most sacred of the do- 
mestic relations. But such sensibility cannot be supposed to be 
universal. Accordingly, the Slate does derive a tangible profit 
from its slaves : this is true to the heart's content of the adversa- 
ries of abolition, and that by means of yearly sales to the negro 
traders. An account, on which we may rely, sets down the an- 



Slavery (Question in Virginia. -17 

nual number of slaves sold to go out of the State at six thousand, 
or more than half the number of births ! The population returns 
show only a yearly addition of four thousand eight hundred to the 
slaves remaining in the State. If all these sales were the result 
of the necessities of the masters, while it must forever be lament- 
ed, it would at the same time be the most portentous proof of 
the financial ruin of the planters of the Stale. But if otherwise, 
if but a common course of business regularly gone into for profit, 
what volumes does it speak of the degradation to which slavery 
may reduce its supporters! And will "the aspiring blood of 
Lancaster" endure it to be said that a Guinea is still to be 
found in America, and that Guinea is Virginia .^ That children 
are reared with the express object of sale into distant regions, 
and that in numbers but little less than the whole number of an- 
nual births.^ It may be that there is a small section of Virginia 
(perhaps we could indicate it) where the theory of population is 
studied with reference to the yearly income from the sale of 
slaves. Shall the profits to Virginia, from this contaminated 
source, be alleged as an economical argument to magnify the 
sacrifice involved in the abolition of siaverv, and this too by 
statesmen who profess to execrate the African slave trade.' For 
ourselves, we can see but little difference between this form of 
the internal slave trade and the African trade itself. But we 
have too deep a stake ourselves in the good name of the land of 
Washington and Jefierson, to be willing to admit that this form 
of profit from slaves is cherished by any but a very few persons. 
Tliis is not tlien an income which Virginia loves to reap. She 
scorns those who resort to it, and will count lightly of the sacri- 
fice which the extinction of this fountain of impure wealth would 
involve. 

Banishing this then out of view, there is no productive value 
of slaves in Virginia. Shut up all outlet into the southern and 
southwestern States, and the price of slaves in Virginia would 
sink down to a cypher. Witliout the possibility of deriving from 
slave labour an}' of the benefits, by which in some countries it 
seems to compensate (whether adequately or not) for its pernicious 
moral effects, Virginia is cursed with an institution unproduc- 
tive of good to her, and potent in mischiefs beyond all her fears. 
If ever there was a specific, which failing of its possible good ef- 
fects, would induce irremediable pains, it is slavery. We check 
the struggling inclination to paint the woes Virginia has suffered 
from its miscarriage, in their true colours, but the truth would 
seem exaggeration. Take then the following temperate detail 
from the speech of M.**. Marshall, every word of which is true 
by the experience of Virginia : 

"Wherefore, then, object to skivery? Because it, is ruinous to the whites — retards 
improvement — roots out an industrious population — banishes the yeomanry of the 
country — deprives the spinner, the weaver, the smitii, the shoemaker, the carpenter, 
of eniployment and support. This evil admits of no remedy ; it is increasing and wiJl 
continue to increase, until the whole country will be inundated with one black wave 

3 



18 Slavery Question in Virginia. 

covering its whole extent, with a few wliite faces here and there floating on the sur- 
face- The master has no capital but what is vested in [slaves;] the father, instead of 
being richer for his sons, is at a loss to provide for them — there is no diversity of oc- 
cupations, no incentive to enterprise. Labour of eveiy species is disreputable because 
performed mostly by slaves. Our towns are stationary, our villages almost every 
where declining, and the general aspect of the coiuitry marks the curse of a wasteful, 
idle, reckless jDopulation, who have no interest in the soil, and care not how much it is 
impoverished. Public improvements are neglected, and the entire continent does not 
present a region for which nature has done so much, and art so little. If cultivated by 
free labour, the soil of Virginia is capable of sustaining a dense population, among 
whom labour would be honourable, and where 'the busy hum of men' would tell that 
all were happy, and that all were free." 

Virginia has suffered, and is now suffering- under ail the ten 
specifications just given, and in a greater degree than any other 
of the slave-holding States could. Her statesmen and engineers 
mourn over her inertness of spirit for public improvements; her 
economists mourn over the little inclination of her citizens to la- 
bour of any kind ; her agriculturists upbraid her for letting the 
soil sink into irrecoverable exhaustion, that she is burdened with 
the dearest sort of labour, and persists in applying to a country 
of originally moderate fertility, a system absolutely ruinous to 
any but the richest alluvial soils; that industry and frugality are 
banished; that siie renders it virtually impossible to open a new 
source of wealth in manufactures, and that while the principle of 
population is almost stagnant among her whites, and her own 
sons are departing from her, she repulses by her domestic rela- 
tions all the emigrants to America from the old world, who 
n)ight else come in to repair her ruin. It is ridiculous to talk of 
the prosperity of a country wholly agricultural, with slave labour 
and exhausted lands. The proud homes of Virginia, from the 
Revolution down to this day, have been passing from the hands 
of their high-minded proprietors, to the humble overseers that 
used to sit helovx the^salt at their board, and from them in their 
turn to some other newer parvenus: agriculture has failed to en- 
rich. Of the white emigrants from Virginia, at least half are 
hard working men, who carry away witii them little besides their 
tools and a stout heart of hope : the mechanic trades have failed 
to give them bread. Commerce she has little, shipping none, 
and it is a fact that the very staple of the State, tobacco, is not 
exported hy her own capital — the State does virtually a commis- 
sion business in it. All the sources of prosperity, moral and eco- 
nomical, are deadened ; thore is a general discontent with one's 
lot; in some of the first settled and choicest parts of her territory, 
symptoms are not wanting of desolate antiquity. And all this 
in youthful America, and in Virginia too, the fairest region of 
America, and with a race of people inferior to none in the world 
in its capacity to constitute a prosperous nation. 

There are some facts disclosed by the population returns for 
1830, which we are not aware have been fully brought to the 
public notice. Every one is now acquainted with the uncomfort- 
able truth, that the whites east of the Blue Ridge had in 1790 
a majority of 25,000, and that in the course of forty years they 



Slavery Q^uestion in Virginia. 



19 



liave not only lost it, but suflered the blacks to get an ascen- 
dency in number to the extent of 81,000: thus the advance of 
the blacks is 106,000 in that half of the State in that period. But 
we may see by ll)e subjoined table that there are not a few coun- 
ties of' middle as well as lower Virginia, (component parts of 
eastern Virginia) which have actually diminished in while popu- 
lation in the last ten years! The first five are counties between 
the Blue Ridge and the head of tide-water; the others below the 
head of tide-water. 



Whites in 1820 




1830. 


Whites in 1820. 




1830. 


Brunswick 


58S9 


5397 


King &i Queen 


5460 


4714 


Amelia 


3409 


3293 


King William 


3449 


3155 


Goochland 


3976 


3857 


Lancaster 


2388 


1976 


Loudon 


16144 


15516 


Northumberland 


4134 


4029 


Mecklenburg 


7710 


7543 


Sussex 


4155 


4118 


Fairfax 


6224 


4892 


Staflbrd 


4788 


4713 


James City 


1556 


12S4 


Warwick 


620 


619 



These counties at an average annual increase of three per cent, 
(which is sufficiently moderate) would have added more than 
20,000 to their aggregate numbers ; they have sustained a loss of 
near 5000 in ten years, which is fully one twelfth of their capi- 
tal in 1820. Conjecturally the people in these counties are as 
prolific as elsewhere; emigration, the result of the characteristic 
ills of Virginia, has done most to occasion this loss. All of these 
are fine counties. 

We freely grant that a slow increase of population is possible 
in a country where the utmost is made of all its resources, and 
that in certain cases it implies a higher degree of civilization, for 
prudence in such matters denotes civilization it seems. But un- 
less the employment of prudential checks be suggested by dan- 
ger of an overcrowded population, certaiVily they are'litlle to 
be desired by statesmen. Tiie unnecessary introduction of pru- 
dential checks leads to the application of means dpstlned by Pro- 
vidence for the subsistence of men, to a thousand less worthy 
purposes; as, when that food, which would support the same 
number or double of human beings, is bestowed on pleasure, 
horses and dogs. Where population has not yet approximated 
the capacity of the country to furnish subsistence, it is premature 
and unhappy to begin the employment of too much prudence, to 
discourage marriages. In fact, this never will occur, unless some 
powerful agents have been at work to benumb, not merely the 
spring of population, but all the springs of prosperity. A very 
slow increase, or a diminution, would be an indication of want 
of prosperity not to be mistaken in most parts of the United 
States; for example, where subsistence is easy to obtain, and po- 
pulation can scarcely any where be said to have pressed on sub- 
sistence. It is said by some persons that the preventive checks 
(prudential) are in fuller operation in Virginia than in the north. 



20 Slavery (Question in T^irginia. 

We confess we had entertained an opposite idea. What is the 
usual age of marriages in Virginia and what in New England ? 
Is forecast indeed more prevalent in Virginia than in New Eng- 
land? If this be indeed so, then unhappy causes must have been 
at work to produce it. 

But it lias been further said that the standard of comfort is 
higlier in Virginia than in the northern states, tiiat this denotes 
higher civilization, and thus the inertness of the principle of po- 
pulation is her highest eulogy. If this be her reliance for a high 
eulogium, we are sorry to say that the ground is rapidly slipping 
from under her feet, for the standard of comfort in Virginia has 
greatly lowered and is daily lowering. All the chief glories of 
Virginia style are faded : gone is the massy coach with its stately 
atlelage of four and six horses, shut is the beneficent hall-door, 
which, as if nailed wide open, once welcomed all comers to its 
princely hospitality ! The watering places no longer blaze with 
the rich but decent pomp of the Virginian, the cities but rarely 
bear witness to his generous expense. Every thing indicates that 
he has reduced his idea of a becoming style of living to a very 
moderate scale. This ingenious supposition, therefore, will not 
account for the stagnation of population. The actual state of the 
standard of comfort, in eifect, is itself a part of the universal evi- 
dence of her decline. If you would assert of any part of the 
United States, where the population was very slowly increasing, 
stationary, or retrograde, that it is not the worse oflTor that, you 
must at least exhibit proof that the positive amount of wealth of 
that part has been augmenting ; and we may add, that, to be con- 
clusive, the augmentation must be in the inverse ratio of the dif- 
ference between the average activity of the principle of popula- 
tion in the United States, and its very reduced activity in that 
particular part of the countr}'. If Massachusetts or Rhode Island 
could be said to be stationary in population, it might unquestion- 
ably be said of them too, that their augmentation of wealth and 
general prosperity was in this or a greater ratio. 

But we look on this whole subject of the increase of national 
wealth, population, Stc, in the case of Virginia, from a some- 
what more elevated point. There are involved herein high and 
solemn obligations on Virginia if she would ever strive to fulfil 
her destiny. The introduction of industry and enterprize is mat- 
ter to her of moral obligation ; the endeavour to add to the stock 
of wealth of the state, as a token and source of general prospe- 
rity, is even a moral duty in her case. It is the distinguishing 
glory and responsibility of the American States, that 

"In their proper motion they ascend; 

descent and fall 

To them is adverse." 

It is only by '* compulsion and laborious flight" that they sink at 
all. The fitting herself for the rivalship in prosperity and mo- 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 



21 



ral dignity, which the Old World beholds in North America 
with awe and wonder, is the most august o\ all interests and du- 
ties, it seems to us, in the appointment of the Providence of the 
Almiighty, save only one: conscience and liberty are the highest 
concerns to her and to every people ! Let any one select for 
himself out of the pictures of the prosperity of the United States 
drawn in the books of travellers, of public economists, or of po- 
litical speculators : Europe sighs at these bright sketches of 
transatlantic felicity; yet, of all these brilliant traits, how few 
are true of Virginia ! Indeed though literally true of some parts 
of America, they are scarcely at all descriptive of this, or of any 
among the older slaveholding states. Suppose the war of Ame- 
rican independence had resulted in nothing but the establishment 
of the Atlantic slaveholding states as new sovereignties: — the 
world would have been still to seek for a home for the emigrants 
of all nations, and for the grand series of spectacles which are said 
to be the dearest sight in the eyes of the powers above : that of 
men congregating together to found new cities under just laws. 
Even as early as the date of the Federal Constitution, eastern 
Virginia had begun to show many of the symptoms of an old 
commonwealth : a tendency to decline, under the influence of an 
apatljy almost on a level with that of the people of the Pope's 
dominions ; while New York appeared manifestly the cradle of 
a vast nation. It seems to us, we must confess, that of all the 
states, none is more unequivocally marked out by nature for the 
prosperous abode of a homogeneous race of freemen than Virginia. 
Her's is not a land which should have been stained by the tread 
of a slave. A philosopher who had surveyed the map of Virgi- 
nia, noted between what degrees she is placed, with what a wealth 
of land and water she is endowed, and how she is rounded off 
into an empire to herself, would hear with amazement that she 
had suicidally adopted slave labour. We extract the following 
faithful picture from the official report of the principal engineer 
of Virginia for the year 1827 : 

" Nowhere has the kind hand of Providence been more profusely bountiful than in 
Virginia; blessed with a climate, and a fertile soil, producing cotton and the best to- 
bacco, besides the common staples of the northern states, to which she even exports 
her flour ; abounding with rich mines; her coal nearer to tide water than that of any- 
other state. Virginia is no less favoured in her geographical position : she occupies in 
the Union an important central position, and the mouth of the Chesapeake ; that fine 
harbouj, always open, strongly protected against aggression, is equal even to that of 
New York. [Add to this that no state is more blessed in the number, character, and dis- 
tribution of her rivers.] She possesses, besides, perhaps more than any other state, 
the elements of manufactures j she has in abundance water power, coal, iron and 
raw materials. With these immense resources Virginia may ask why she is not the 
most flourishing state in the Union? Why she does not occupy the commercial sta- 
tion for which nature designed her ? Circumstances purely accidental and temporary 
can alone have produced this state of things." 

It is food for irony, aye very bitter irony, to know that a coun- 
try, thus made the fittest in the world for freemen, is not in fact 
good enough to be worked by slaves ! We seem to have before 



22 Slavery (Question in Virginia. 

us in her llie image of a youtliful power of the world lapsed from 
her high destiny, and in the homage of filial awe and grief we 
bow down with tremhling over her decay ! It is to us men of 
the western world as if the " Prince of the lights of heaven, 
which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should, as 
it were through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to 
rest liimself."* Yet, we fondly imagine, it is but for a moment: 
the fiery vigour shall soon work off the corruption, and tlie ce- 
lestial origin shall quickly show itself in a career of uneclipsed 
beauty. And when Virginia, by disembarrassing herself of all 
checks on her prosperity, and purging off all her evils, is fully 
girt for the race she has appointed to her, we are persuaded that 
there is not one wholesome feeling, nolr one patriotic principle, 
which might gain lier the affection of the southern states, (let her 
not fear this,) and the admiration of all, and that could make 
her eminent among commonwealths, whicli she would be found 
to want. 

If such be the evils under which Virginia has already languish- 
ed, it does not remain to consider whether they are likely to in- 
crease. They must increase ; they are rapidly corroding all the 
hitherto sound elements, and they will go on to spread mischiefs 
of their own kind until they will be felt by all to have efl'ected 
absolute ruin. But as soon as slaver}' has grown to a great ex- 
tent, there comes in a new evil of a different cast: this is danger, 
physical danger. On this subject we forbear to touch except with 
a scrupulous hand. We feel all the delicacy of urging any con- 
siderations addressed to the fears of a gallant people. But there 
is that in the nature of a servile war, which sets at nought as 
well the most chivalrous courage, as the security of civil police 
and of military discipline. We may go on to say then, that in 
1830, the whole population of Virginia was 1,211,272, of which 
694,445 are whites, 469,724 are slaves, 47,103 free blacks; that 
457,000 blacks are east of the Blue Ridge, while only 375,935 
whites are east of the mountains. ■]- We do not believe that in 
any short time to come the blacks will be able to rise and over- 
power the whites. But the experience of 1831 teaches what an 
amount of calamity in fact, and misery from alarm, may be the 
result of the insurrection of a contemptible handful of slaves. — 
These partial risings may occur at any time: are they not wor- 
thy of anticipatory apprehension ? But that the time will come 
when the blacks will be so numerous and so concentrated in a 
section of the state, as to be truly formidable to the whites, we 
cannot doubt, if the fixed principles of our species prove but 

* Hooker, I. 3. 

I It will be perceived that we have studiously avoided making inviduous distinctions 
between Virginia east and west of the Blue Ridge, and this even at the risk of doing 
much injustice to the west. ' Once for all, it is to be understood that the mischiels of 
slavery are much less in the west than in the east. But we are determined to regard 
the State as one, and the ills suffered by one part as the common calamity, proper for 
the deliberation of every county. 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 



23 



S 
pen 

th 



faithful to themselves. We have seen how slow is the increase 
of the white population in Virginia, and we must not overlook 
the fact of the rapid increase of the black. Notwithstanding 
the constant drain of iier slaves, (say GOOO, or one half of their 
increase) to supplv the plantations of tlie new states, the slaves 
have so multiplied^that though east of the Blue Ridge in 1790 
the whites had a majority of 25,000, in 1830 the blacks had 
rown to a majority of 81,000 ! The emigration of whites in this 
eriod has by no possibility equalled that of blacks. What are 
le presages to be drawn from this? But some flatter them- 
selves that this relative inequality will not increase — perhaps 
will not be even so great in 1840. Mr. Marshall has told us, that 
by the census of 1830, the number of slaves in Eastern Virginia 
under ten years of age, exceeds that of whites of the same age, 
more than 31,000! What can more solemnly show that the 
disparity existing in our generation is small compared with 
that which will in all probability exist in the generation of our 
children ? 

But it has been said by some that even this probable increase 
portends no danger, if the whites do but go on increasing, though 
in unequal proportions. It is proved thus : 

The police necessary to keep order in a community is never 
greater than one man out of every hundred ; — thus wliile the po- 
pulation is one hundred, tlie hundredth man may not be able to 
enforce obedience ;— when grown to a thousand, the one hundred 
police men may succeed better, and when arrived at a million, 
the decimal ten thousand is certain to maintain order under all 
circumstances. In this way it is pretended that the security goes 
on increasing. It is all a mistake, then, that rebellions have ever 
triumphed in countries where the police (civil or military,) 
amounted to ten thousand ! But every one sees up to what point 
it is true, that the safety increases pari passu with the materials 
of danger, and how as you pass that point the security diminish- 
es. Virginia herself has already passed this point. We recom- 
mend this security to England in her police in Ireland : she will 
find the two millions of Protestants able to furnish twice ten 
thousand men, who demonstratively can keep down the five mil- 
lions of Catholics without aid from IiLngland ; but if they cannot 
do it to-day, they surely will, when the two parties have each 
doubled their numbers. This method of deriving increasing se- 
curity from redoubling danger, is parallel to Hermes Harris's de- 
finition of the indefinite article : "a method of supplying by ne- 
gation." It follows from it that Virginia was all along mistaken, 
when, before the Revolution, she essayed three and twenty times 
to gain the royal assent to a law to provide for her domestic safety 
by prohibiting the further introduction of slaves from Africa; 
that she but exposed herself to ridicule, when she taunted the 
king in the preamble to her constitution, with " the inhuman use 
of the royal negative;" and that Louisiana has wholly blundered 



24 Slavery i^uestion in Virginia. 

in laying so many obstacles in the way of the introduction of 
slaves from the other States, under hope to save herself from fu- 
ture civil war. But the example of Brazil is pointed out to us : 
it is true that Brazil is imbruted by a proportion of four millions 
of slaves to one million of wiiites, and her unnatural empire still 
exists. Yes, and her existence hangs by a hair. If we are not 
misintbrmed, the German recruits that mutinied for ill treatment, 
and were quelled by the slaves being turned loose on them, (they 
were proclaimed free gauie to any slave that would massacre 
them — what the poor Germans would have called vogelfrey,) 
might give our speculatists a lesson on the terrors of the Brazil- 
lian slave population. 

But grant it true, that the multiplication of the slaves will not 
go on at the present rapid rate, in Virginia : when we consider 
that there are adequate causes working which are certain to keep 
back the whites, it is impossible not to regard the increase of the 
slaves at any probable rate as full of danger. It is the simple case 
of a distinct race of people within our bosom, now nearly equal, 
soon to be more numerous than ourselves, exposed to every temp- 
tation (we do not say inducement) to become our deadliest foe. 
This is the danger which reasoning cannot check nor argument 
avert. Police can never save harmless against an enemy that is 
at your hearth and in the most confidential relations with you. 
Besides, what profit does slavery confer on Virginia to make any 
one willing to see established a standing force of five or ten thou- 
sand men, at an expense equal to that of the whole peace estab- 
lishment of the army of the United States ? 

The only rational ground for believing that Virginia will never 
contain the vast number of slaves given by the estimates for the 
end of the next hundred years, is that the impoverishment of the 
state will make it impossible to maintain them.* 

II. The practicability of greatly diminishing the evil of slave^ 
ry, in Virginia. Are these ills incurable ? Oi- if they can never 
be wholly remedied, may their disproportionate progress not be 
checked f May they not in fact be diminished ? 

Before we proceed to speak of any particular plan lor eflecting 
this, let us briefly recount the objects which are proposed to be 
accomplished by any such schemes. It is expected to afford sen- 
sible relief to Virginia by withdrawing her slave labour, and sub- 
stituting free labour in its place, by the superior cheapness and 
efficiency of which an impulse will be given to the inertness of 
the principles of prosperity. It builds on the supposition that the 
State can aftbrd the gradual withdrawal of her present labour, 
which it has been fully shown can never prove profitable to her, 

* We have omitted all mention of the Protective System as a source of ruin to Vir- 
ginia. For the ills which we have specified, slavery seems tons an adequate cause. — 
It seems at least reasonable to attribute no ills to the Tariff except such as can be 
shown to have arisen since 1824. None of those enumerated have had so late an ori- 
gin. The previous disablmg of Virginia by slavery, has doubtless rendered her much 
mo);e susceptible of injury from the errors of that system. 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 25 

(though It may to other States,) and that she can afford it, be- 
cause she has immense capabilities which could not fail to draw 
to her an adequate supply of productive labour, of a very differ- 
ent class, which would more than compensate her for the loss of 
the former. It counts on the hope of rearing In Virginia and in- 
viting from abroad a yeomanry to till the large plantations of 
the rich proprietors, but mucii more to give new life to her hus- 
bandry, by the introduction of a large class of diligent faithful 
smalTfarmers not interested to impoverish the soils further, but 
who would soon repair their present decay. It cherishes the hope 
of creating an extensive class of mechanics, and of templing the 
establishment of manufactures ; and, by a general revivification of 
the habits and spirit of the State, to build up cities, and render 
Virginia one of the most flourishing, as she is perhaps the most 
favoured, of all the Atlantic States. It is to be hoped that a fund 
for compensating the individual masters may be obtained, and thus 
that value in hand may be left, at the same time that the slaves are 
withdrawn ; yet so thorough is the conviction of the ruinous cha- 
racter (in an economical view) of exclusive slave labour to Virgi- 
nia, that it is believed, if the masters could be tempted to a gra- 
dual deportation of the slaves, without a farthing of compensation 
from government, there would be ultimate gain, and not loss, 
from it. The very last cases to which we would compare such 
gradual withdrawal, of what is in fact not a source of wealth, 
would be tlie expulsion of the eight liundred thousand Jews from 
Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, or that of nearly a million 
of Moors under Philip III., or that of the Huguenots from 
France ; in all which cases the persons expelled carried with them 
greater personal wealth in proportion to their number, finer skill, 
and more thriving habits than were left behind them, besides 
that in them, the expulsion was virtually immediate. Such com- 
parisons, to say the least, are not supported by very cogent ana- 
logies. 

We are fully persuaded ourselves that the emancipation of the 
slaves, and their transportation out of the limits of the State, will 
be the only mode of action on the subject which will be benefi- 
cial either to the blacks or the whites. We too, are of opinion 
that a general emancipation of the slaves, on the supposition of 
their remaining principally among us, would engender evils, the 
aggregate of which would be greater than all the evils of slavery, 
great as they unquestionably are.* We shall therefore make no 
further allusion to this idea. 

* While this is true of African slaves in a community of while men of the Euro- 
pean sjDecies, we are by no means persuaded that such would be the necessary result 
in a case of masters and bondsmen of the same race. Such we knoio is not the opi- 
nion of German statists, or the ejcperiments of tlie last forty years in middle and east- 
ern Europe. English travellers have treated of the Teutonic and Sclavonic sections 
of Europe (the last are not to be studied rightly except through the medium of Ger- 
man books and the German language,) with a wrong headedness only equalled by 
their fashion of travel-writing in the unlucky United States ; always except Rus- 
sel's Tour in Germany. 

4 



26 Slavery Question in Virginia. 

We think that most of the arguments of the opponents of all 
action, on the ground of its futility, err from a mistake of the 
terms of the problem. The problem is not, with those project- 
ors who offer no compensation to the masters, to prevail on Virgi- 
nia to deprive herself in one day of one hundred millions of pro- 
perty, and to expel from her borders at once half a million of la- 
bouring hands. This would indeed be ruin to every class of in- 
terests, and would be an impossibility in terms. Still it is pre- 
tended that a gradual plan for the same object, no matter how 
slow and how wisely directed, though it operate not on the cer- 
tain interests but the contingent, not on the actual but the poten- 
tial, no matter though, by asking a small sacrifice to-day, it give 
ample opportunity, and put in the master's reach new means, of 
making the future sacrifices supportable, yet that it makes no dif-^ 
ference; that it implies the total wreck of that amount of capital, 
and the loss of that amount of productive labour. Now, we hum- 
bly conceive that time is of the very essence of a problem like 
this. It is true that in any view of the case, some sacrifice would 
be involved, but we wholly reject the idea that it rises to that 
degree. On the other hand, when compensation is talked of as 
possible, it is not meant by any one that there is any fund in 
America which could purchase at once, at the actual price, all the 
slaves in Virginia and transport them. The proposition we mean 
to discuss is, to relieve the State of the annual increase of the 
blacks, with the hope of benefit in a double aspect : first, by keep- 
ing the black population stationary to check the increase of the 
evils and dangers ; second, to prepare in this way a method of 
finally extirpating the great evil itself. But the pecuniary amount 
of this annual sacrifice, (supposing such sacrifice to be supported 
wholly by her own means, or to be grfituitous,) is by no means 
the measure of the loss to be suffered by Virginia. The loss to 
the wealth of the whole Slate from the abstraction annually of 
five or six thousand slaves, productive as they are of mischiefs of 
an economical nature, may not be at the time very great, and in 
a very few years may, by countervailing benefits, not otherwise to 
be obtained, be rendered merely nominal. 

For ourselves, we desire to be distinctly understood to dissent 
from the opinion of Mr. Faulkner and others, that property is the 
creature of civil society, and from all the consequences deduced 
therefrom as means of arriving at the authority to deprive the 
master of his slave. Nor do we consider, however perfect the 
right of a communitj' lo abate nuisances, that the right of peremp- 
tory action on this subject can well be rested on that ground. — 
Nor yet do we consider that the requirement of the Bill of Rights 
of Virginia, that private property shall not be taken for public 
uses without due compensation, is to be evaded by the plea of 
public necessity : the provision of the Bill of Rights (which in 
this case is merely declaratory of the law of nature) is intended 
as veell for exigencies as for common occasions, and is meant to 



Slavery (Question in Virginia. 27 

be equally sovereign over boili. Necessity gives the public a 
right to take private pioperty— this is undeniable ; but under con- 
dition of compensation. Jf compensation cannot be niade to-day, 
it is due to-morrow ; if impossible for the present generation, it 
is just to impose a share of it on posterity ; if it cannot be made 
in full measure, it is at least due so far as it can be made. This 
we take to be the rationale of the operation of the right of neces- 
sity. We will tell these gentlemen, that there is one ground, 
and only one, which could ever be a logical justification (we do 
not speak of its moral propriety) for peremptorily depriving the 
master of his slaves without compensation : any such bill must 
make its own defence by reciting, in its preamble, that the claim 
of property in slaves is unfounded. But we, for our part, earn- 
estly hope that no one may ever think any such law expedient. ^ 

VVe also decline assenting to the opinion of some of the aboli- 
tionists, that, though the master's right over his living slaves 
should be conceded, yet he has no claim of property in the unborn, 
for the reason that there can be no property in a thing not in 
esse. This position is wholly untenable u'nder any jurisprudence. 
All systems lay it down that there may be a present right to a fu- 
ture interest: it is potential if not actual, and is many times salea- 
ble for a valuable consideration. The civilians treat the increase of 
slaves as precisely on the footing of the fruits of any other thing. 
Let it be avowed, then, that the State has only a right to do with 
the future increase what it has a right to do with the living 
slaves. We do agree, however, that the public mind will be 
much more ready to yield to a plan, which is to begin its opera- 
tion with the children yet to be born, than if it began with the 
slaves now existing. The difference between the potential value 
of these contingent births and the value of actual lives, it is su- 
perfluous to say, is very great. Mr. Jefferson had the true view 
of it, when he*^ said, the sacrifice would not be felt to be very 
great, being the surrender " of an object which they have never 
yet known or counted as part of their property." 

Having made these disclaimers, we venture to lay down some 
principles of our own. First, it is to be assumed that no human 
being has an abstract right to hold another in a state of perpetual 
involuntary bondage, much less with a descending power over 
the posterity of that other. It is quite impossible to conceive of 
any rational being's holding the contrary of this proposition. No 
two men could look each other in the face and assert it. This 
truth being postulated, lis proper use is not to lay it aside and 
never let it be remembered again in the course of an argument 
on the subject of abolition. Our adversaries in words universally 
admit it as readily as we demand its acknowledgment. But al- 
most the whole train of their reasoning involves a total forget- 
fulness of it. The true use of it is to introduce the element of 
moral duty into the problem of the economist, and to furnish the 
modf of virtue, as one of the ways and means in solving the 



28 Slavery (Question in P^irginia. 

complication of difficulties, which appear to obstruct all the plans 
of abolition that can be proposed. While, then, we promised not 
to claim a sacrifice to mere abstract justice, we can by no means 
consent to its being wholly cast out of view. We hope to be 
pardoned for adding here, that should Dr. Whateley ever have 
a clever disciple in logic in America, we trust he will favour us 
with a treatise on the true functions of genera} truths in moral 
reasoning. We really believe that there are some politicians in 
our country, who could be persuaded to define abstract princi- 
ples, to be propositions which are true in terms, but false in every 
conceivable instance of their application ! Second, we admit, 
nay we will maintain against any adversary, the innocence of 
slaveholding, under present circumstances, in Virginia. But it 
is with this qualification : we have always held the opinion that 
almost every master in Virginia believed it his duty to emanci- 
pate his slaves, whenever he was convinced that it could be done 
to the advantage of the slave, and without greater injury to the 
master than is implied in the continuance of the bondage. Such 
we still believe to be the general sentiment there. If there be a 
single owner who neither hopes that, in some future day, this 
occasion may occur to him or his posterity, nor intends should it 
occur to avail liimself of it, then we must confess that we cannot 
hold his sentiment to be entirely innocent. We defy contradic- 
tion when we say that in Virginia, from the year 1776 down to 
1832, the prevalent sentiment ever has been that slavery was not 
entailed on the State forever. None of her economists has ever 
defended the abstract right over the slaves, none has ever been 
willing to believe in the perpetuity of slavery, as far as we know, 
except that Mr. Giles has expressed in his golden casket (mons 
anon movendo) certain opinions which are, it must be admit- 
ted, incompatible with the future possibility of renouncing the 
dominion over them. Third, we admit tliat slavery does not ex- 
ist in Virginia in any thing like the rigour which some misguid- 
ed persons connect with the very idea of slavery. An inhuman 
master is rare, and cruelty to slaves is as little habitual as other 
crimes. But if an anti-abolitionist who regards domestic slavery 
as the optimum among good institutions, while asserting the 
benign and sacred character of the relation of master and slave as 
observed in Virginia, should boast that Virginia is "in fact a ne- 
gro raising State for other States," and that " she produces 
enough for her own supply and six thousand for sale," we must 
say that this is a material subtraction from the truth of his pic- 
ture of the sanctity of the relation. It would be well to recall it 
and thrust it out of view. 

We proceed now to speak of the practicability of devising some 
plan for the relief of the State. One main point to be gained is 
this: that the people of Virginia be impressed with a thorough 
conviction of the exceeding desirableness and the urgent necessi- 
ty of doing something promptly. The great triumph will be 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 29 

When, on the fullest view of the present interests, moral and eco- 
nomic.il, of tliis generation, and of its dnty to the posterity who 
are to inherit the "fee simple" of Virginia, there shall be, in the 
minds of a great majority, the clear and unalterable opinion that 
slavery is not a source of prosperity, to her, and that it will not 
do for this generation to altenipt nothing to bring about a change. 
Another great poiiU is, that some plan be adopted with the 
sanction of the Siate. It is of vastly more importance to the 
final deliverance of the State, that a tqpde be selected and come 
forth to the world with tiie crowning sanction of the State, than 
it is what that mode may be. For, it is certain that the public 
opinion, thus solemnly announced, will be an instrument for the 
execution of the plan, the power of which we cannot exaggerate 
to ourselves. The public once predisposed to its success, half 
the task is done. This brings us at once to the consideration of 
the first among our ways and means for diminishing the evils of 
slavery: the moral elements which will be at work for its accom- 
plishment. These elements are powers as welt known in politi- 
cal economy as others which seem more sid)stantial. We ntterly 
protest against this question being argued as if the emancipa- 
tion were in fact a mere money speculation, and the success of 
the adopted plan were to rise and fall according as its pecuniary 
temptations were greater or less than those from some other acci- 
dental quarter — as if there were no other reasons likely to have 
the sliglitest effect on the master, but such as went to show that 
he was thereby to malie a good bargain, so far as his poor, cir- 
cumscribed, present and personal interest was concerned. It will 
be monstrous indee(i, if, in a problem like the present, of which 
the very terms are instinct with moral forces, a calculator should 
leave wholly out of his estimate of means of working it, the va- 
lue of a little virtue, a slight sense of justice, and a grain of com- 
mon honesty, as agents. It is most true that we too propose to 
advance the interests of those who now hold slaves, and believe 
that this will be effectually done by some radical plan of emanci- 
pation : but it is by the help of tl)e moral considerations that the 
masters must be led to look on their higher and ultimate interests 
as worthy of some sacrifice of present inferior interests. We 
readily assent to the opinion that the enthusiasm of abstract vir- 
tue is not the true temper in which a great work, like the pre- 
sent, should be undertaken, or carried on; and we cannot more 
distinctly express our views on the matter, than by citing the fol 
lowing passage from the African Repository of September 1827 : 

"Tliis is not the age of entliusiasm : far from it. Too large a part of the talent 
of the age is devoted to caricature, to ridicule ; ai)d what is more, too large a part of 
the good sense and good learning of the day is in the hands of those who look for 
the ludricous part of every plan, by much too large to permit the public mind to be 
heated with unnecessary zeal," even in the best cause, or to uphold for a long time any 
grave farce. It is the age of practical reason, of great moral trutiis rigidly establish- 
ed by cool practical experiment, the age which has relieved human natuue from tlie 
apprehension that any of the baneful evils in society are sealed and fated on us by 
our own imbecility, by proofs which are intended for the most plodding, the most de- 
termined enemies of novelty. Enthusiasm is not fit to be trusted with any gr^at 



30 Slavery (Question in T'^irginia. 

scheme, unsteady, blind, and uiidiscviminating as it is. The most anxious zealot is little 
wise who woidd not rather trust his cherished plans to that state of devotion to princi- 
ple so naturally rising up in this age, which, tempered by prudence and restrained by 
fbar of the charge of absurdity, takes its course calm, collected, and like the cloud of 
the poet, 'moveth altoffether, if it move at all.' Public opinion and public feeling, 
when thus informed, are indeed the voice of God." 

But we must be understood to be far from deeming liglilly of 
the power of philanthropy. A senator from South Carolina once 
said with much piquancy, that " benevolence somehow was rather 
an unsuccessful adventur^ in the south." There, as elsewhere, 
avarice and ambition seem to come of a healthier stock, and last 
their day and generation : but do not let us libel poor nature in 
the south so scandalously as to suppose that when the disinterest- 
ed feelings are in question, "there is no throb under the left 
breast," as Persius has it. It was hitherto said that avarice has 
been more successfully pelted by the satirists than any other 
passion ; but we doubt if philanthropy has not had quite a suffi- 
cient share of worrying. We do not love to see any one suc- 
ceed in discrediting all reliance on philanthropy. Whether phi- 
lanthropy has ever proved competent to carry through, unassist- 
ed, any one great work, matters very little : it is happily the 
fact that it rarely fails of commanding a thousand auxiliary in- 
terests to lend it subsidy. But among the successful agents in 
Jiny undertaking for meliorating the condition of human life, 
one of the chief, and that which could least be spared, will al- 
ways, as hitherto, prove to be those feelings which are founded 
in sympathy for others, and in a sense of duty. " Many," says 
an English moralist with great force^ "are the modes of evil — 
many the scenes of human suffering; but if the general condition 
of man is ever to be ameliorated, it can only be through the me- 
dium of belief in human virtue." But even suppose that all 
change in the world is to be effected merely by the triumph of 
one sort of Interest over another. What then? VVe need but ask 
of our theorists of human nature, that we be permitted to believe 
that man's selfishness is distinguished from that of the brutes by 
a power of large discourse in his calculations; that he is capable 
of balancing a contingent interest against one certain, a future 
interest against a present; that he is capable of weighing one 
species of valuable interest, such as money, against another such 
as the acquisition of moral habits which would prove in their turn 
more profitable; that he is capable of the conception that indi- 
vidual interest is often best promoted by generosity to one's 
country ; and that it is one of the commonest of human propen- 
sities to be prodigal of wealth, of ease, and of life, for the wel- 
fare or the honour of one's country, so that the age which is to 
come after may not receive an inheritance profaned by hereditary 
disgrace. Give us these capacities in human nature, and upon 
them we will build you up a hope for the noblest undertakings. 
But were we to suppose a large body of men elevated to this en- 
lightened pilch of self-interest, and united for some great pur- 



Slavery (Question in Virginia, 31 

pose, we mircli fear that we should be parasitical enough to offer 
ihem the adulation of ascribing to them a spirit a little more dis- 
embodied than selfislmess — " of the cartli, earthy." If it be 
meant to assert, that the immediate and personal interests are the 
only safe reliances in any problem of human action, we boldly 
deny the assertion. Remote, prospective interests have often 
been the dominant motives over a wliole nation. But the labours 
of mere philanthropy have been, in fact, invaluable, and when 
combined with the holy impulse of conscience, it has proved in 
our own day, that it is capable of success in enterprises of the 
vastest scope, and beset with the most obstinate difficulties. 

By the aid of these moral elements, we are able to dissipate 
the apprehension which has been expressed by some, lest, even 
if the number of five or six thousand were annually deported, it 
should be found that the operation proved wholly nugatory, un- 
der the stimulated influence of the spring of population. Some 
have imagined, tliat, if government were possessed of means to 
compensate the masters, at the present average price of slaves, 
the desire of government to purchase would elevate the price 
be3'ond the natural value, and that consequently the raising of 
them would become an object of primary importance throughout 
the State, thus inducing a general resori to every means of ren- 
dering the race more prolific. It might be answered, first, tha* 
to those who know the state of things in this respect in Virginia, 
it would seem not easy, even for Euler himself, to imagine more 
liberal encouragement than is at present afforded to the blacks. 
Besides, it by no means appears that the best way to succeed in 
giving a perfect elasticity (a property in practical mechanics 
hitherto wanting) to this delicate spring, would be to devise 
special plans for its improvement. Any increased propensity to 
promiscuous intercourse would of course not add very much to 
the production. But all this objection is futile in the extreme. 
If the day is ever to arrive when a bill is to pass the Virginia 
Legislature for the purchase and deportation of the annual sur- 
plus, it will noturally be an expression of the sentiments of the 
Stale, that slavery is an evil to the commonwealth. No one will 
thank the Legislature for passing a bill through the forms under 
favour of accidental circumstances, whereby the public sentiment 
is not embodied, and a large majority of the citizens pledged to 
a hearty co-operation in its execution. Surely we must be par- 
doned for saying that we shall on no account believe that every 
scheme which ingenious cupidity can contrive to render its ope- 
ration nugatory, will be unscrupulously resorted to throughout 
the State. That some slaveholders would avail themselves of 
the most immoral means of encouraging the spring of population, 
and thus pro tanto thwart the law, may of course be expected, 
bu^ never that such shifts would be the general resort.* It is 

*It is no reply tn this to say that such an abolition bill will only pass by being 
forced on eastern Virginia by the valley and western Virginia. The ^vhole argument 



32 Slavery Question in Virginia. 

superfluous to addj that such a moral phenomenon would itself 
point out the remed}^, which would be found in a different tone 
of legislation. 

While we are on this head, (the probability of such a law's 
proving nugatory,) we may notice anoiher objection, ft has been 
said, as we liave already noticed, that Virginia produces enough 
slaves for her own supply, and six thousand for sale. It may be 
subjoined to that statement, that, if motives of humanity did not 
prevent many masters from selling negroes who could most ad- 
vantageously be spared, she would be able to sell five times that 
number, were there purchasers for them. Now, suppose the 
government of Virginia enters the slave market resolved to pur- 
chase six thousand for emancipation and deportation, is it not 
evident, they say, that it must overbid the southern slave trader, 
and thus take the very slaves who would have gone to the south .'' 
Not in the least likely. Tiie average estimate of ^'200 per head, 
has been made under the stimidus of a large demand from the 
south, as great as it is ever likely to be hereafter, (doubtless 
greater,) and of the competition of slave traders in every parish. 
The price of slaves in Virginia has always been regulated more 
by foreign demand (of late years, entirely regulated by it) than 
by the home value. In this situation of things, if a new buyer 
were to come into the market (we blush to use these words as 
applied to the operation of the government under the beneficent 
law of which we are speaking) resolved to buy at any cost every 
slave whom any owner might be desirous of selling, it is true that 
the slaves who would else have been sent to the south, would, 
among the rest, fall into his hands. But were our new buyer 
only resolved to purchase as many as six thousand, and the 
southern traders were desirous of buying six thousand more, it 
would only be for the former to wait till the demand of the latter 
was supplied, and then bu}' his own number j for, as soon as the 
inducement of the not inhuman destination of the slaves, who 
might be sold to the new buyer, had been brought into play, 
we dare say that Virginia would willingly, as she well could, 
spare twelve thousand per annum at the same price. This shows 
at once, that as long as the demand exists in the south, the due 
quota can be annually furnished from Virginia, and that this 
drain for the relief of Virginia will not in this way be stopped. 
Thus much to show that putting money into the hands of the 
State, to purchase from willing masters, \\ould not at least prove 
nugatory by merely enabling the State — actum agere — to buy the 
very slaves, none other, wlio would otherwise have departed 

assumes that the State has a fair compensation to offer to tlie master ; for the quicken- 
ing of the spring is to be occasioned by a great market demand. When compensation 
becomes possible, the east will be as willing to yield as the west. Moreover, in any form 
of abolition, it is a woful delusion to suppose that the parties for and against the 
movement will be all the non-slaveholders on the one side, and all the slaveholders on 
the other. Did we not think it indecent to speak of divisions in the State, we would 
say we have entire reliance on middle Virginia, as well as the valley and the west. 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 33 

from the State. The fund will manifestly act as auxiliary to 
the operations of the southern traders, and in the precise measure 
of its magnitude will extend additional relief to the overburden- 
ed State. It is not irrational to suppose, if the State were to fix a 
fair maximum price, beyond which it would not bii}', that it 
would find many more slaves oflered at tliat price than it coidd 
yearly take, and thus masters would come to ofier them at even 
lower than the average price. Should, unhappily for Virginia, 
(for however mortifying it is, this outlet is her only safety valve 
at present) the southern markets ever be closed by the legislation 
of the southern States, then we may indeed thank the supposed 
fund for supplying their place. If no substitute for that outlet be 
then found, the present sources of danger and ruin are frightfully 
increased indeed ! 

We confess that we count largely on the operation of the moral 
elements, to induce many masters to surrender their slaves volun- 
tarily and gratuitously, if the State would provide the means of 
colonizing them out of the United States. In the year 1816, 
when slave labour was infinitely more profitable than it is now, 
as all know from the inflated prices of'tobacco, &c., Stc, Mr. 
Randolph of Roanoke, w ho is, perhaps, better qu?ilified to speak 
for the slaveholders of Virginia than an^' other man, said : " if k 
place could be provided for their reception and a mode of sending 
them hence, there were hundreds, nay thousands, who would by 
manumitting tiieir slaves, relieve themselves from the cares at- 
tendant on their possession." We repeat most emphatically the 
declaration of Gen. Brodnax, and add that there can be no 
mistake in asserting that '"there would be again another class, 
(he had already heard of many) while they could not afford to 
sacrifice the entire value of their slaves, would cheerfully com- 
promise with the Stale for half of their value." 

It is not denied by us, too, that the adoption of soine plan with 
the sanction of the State will have the moral eflect (not to excite 
a feeling of insecurity and apprehension as to this kind of pro- 
perty, and so incline the owners to dispose of it at a loss) — but 
to weaken the almost exclusive attachment of the master to this 
species of property, to make him cast about for means of making 
his other resources more available, and to set him upon certain 
broad and liberal calculations, whereby he may satisfy himself 
that more prosperous and more valuable interests may be had in 
exchange for this property. In the beginning, and for several 
years, there would, we do not doubt, be as many furnished for 
transportation (exclusive of the present free blacks) as would be 
wanted, without any cost for their freedom; and after the ex- 
periment of colonizing a large number annually Is fairly tried 
with success, then we would draw to an almost unlimited amount 
on this bank of humanity w iihout fear of protest. 

Will any one say that the inefiiciency of moral restraints to 
check commercial" cupidity, is shown in the impossibility of 
5 



34 Slavery Q^ueslton in Virginia. 

checking the African slave trade ? We reply, that we know that 
this impossibility was urpjed as one of the best reasons against its 
prohibition by laws in England and other countries; but that it 
was clearly wise nevertheless to prohibit it, for the following if 
for no other reason : tiie law would eflectually prevent all men 
who were not desperately depraved from lending their future 
countenance to it. It is known that men like the excellent Mr. 
Newton of Olney were owners of slave ships — the public voice 
of Christian England once expressed, such men and all others 
with a single spark of virtue, abjured it for ever, and left it to 
pirates alone. Besides, even as to this example, we are content 
to say, that in America, with a coast the most tempting in the 
world to smugglers, yet since 1808 we are not aware that at- 
tempts have been made to violate the laws against the introduc- 
tion of slaves from Africa. Indeed we hope that Edwards's ap- 
prehension, that their importation into the West Indies could 
never be stopped, has not proved altogether just as to the British 
possessions. 

But it is time to proceed to the other rtieans, on which we rely, 
for the liberation of Virginia from her exigency, and in so doing, 
to unfold more distinctly what practicable mode of action there 
is. Once for all, we declare that we have, however, no confi- 
dence in any plan except under condition that it be accompanied 
with the public favour: if the people of Virginia really desire 
relief from their slaves, we believe most solemnly that it can be 
obtained without ruinous consequences to themselves. Touch- 
ing the specific project of Mr. T. J. Randolph, we refer to what 
we have already cursorily said, both as to the reasoning by which 
some have supported it, and as to the merit of the conception of 
beginning with the after born. We believe that means may be 
found to colonize the annual surplus of the slaves of Virginia, 
and to purchase such a portion of that surplus as it may be neces- 
sary to purchase. 

The annual increase of slaves in Virginia (leaving out of view 
the 6000 supposed to be taken off to the southern markets) is 
less than 5000. If this number of slaves be valued at the ave- 
rage of 200 dollars per head, the sum necessary to purchase them 
will be about a million of dollars. To defray the expense of their 
deportation to Africa and subsistence there for some months will, 
on the satisfactory calculation of Mr. Mathew Carey, to which 
we must refer, at 25 dollars per head for adults and children, re- 
quire 125,000 dollars — add to whicii the cost of deportation of 
1200 free blacks (their annual increase,) 30,000 dollars, and we 
have the sum of 150,000 dollars. That the State of Virginia has 
no possible means of purchasing 5000 slaves per annum is ob- 
vious. But were the entire cost that of transportation only, 
150,000 dollars, we should insist that the Legislature take it into 
serious consideration how far that expense exceeds its means. 
In any event, our adversaries will allow us to set down the 



Slavery Q^uestlon in T^irginia. 35 

item of transportation to the charge of the State : if this be all, it 
is to otier no insurmountable embarrassment. Perhaps it may 
be thought best to deport the free negroes first, and then tfie 
whole expense is that of tr;insportation. Where, however, shall 
we find that greater fund which will presently be needed for the 
purchase of the surplus of the slaves, and before long for the pur- 
chase of a part of the capital number ? There is not far oft' a fund 
to which we believe our eyes may be turned. We have come 
to the conclusion that such a fund is the proceeds of the public 
lands in the Treasury of the General Government; and we do 
now invite the friends of the removal and colonization of the ne- 
groes to fix hereafter their thoughts and to press their preteti- 
sions on this fund. The annual income to government from the 
public lands is now estimated at three millions. Let one-third 
of this amount be demanded for this object, to he under the en- 
tire management of the State authorities. 

In coincidence with the known opinion of Virginia, we are 
not willing to demand a simple appropriation of money from 
Congress. But we are inclined to think, that an appropriation 
from the receipts of the public lands would not be liable to the 
constitutional objection, which would forbid a grant of money 
raised by taxes. The public lands belong to the United States 
in absolute ownership; as to that part of the public domain ob- 
tained by cession from the States themselves, it will be found 
that the Acts of Cession uniformly declare that the territory is 
given "as a common fund for the use and benefit" of the United 
States. Such are the words of the Acts of Virginia, New-York, 
and Georgia. The grants of the two former were made during 
the time of the old Confederation ; of the latter, subsequently. In 
the Constitution of the United States it is provided that "Con- 
gress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules 
and regulations respecting the territory or other property be- 
longing to the United States." This certainly seems to import 
a complete right to grant the public lands, under the sole con- 
dition that it shall be faithfully and bona fide for the common 
use and benefit. And we are free to confess, that we should re- 
gard the temporary appropriation of the proceeds of the public 
lands, to one embodied purpose that might be said to come up to 
the definition " for the common use and benefit" of all the States, 
as a more faithful execution of the condition, than the distribu- 
tion of the same to the States for application to any purpose in 
their discretion. The lands have hitherto been pledged for the 
public debt, but are soon to be released. It will then remain a 
question, whether the removal of the negroes deserves to be 
termed a measure demanded for the common benefit of the United 
States ? We have an unfeigned respect for constitutional scruples, 
but we are not ambitious ourselves of entertaining more scruples 
than Mr. Madison. Let us hear then what that greatest living 
authority says upon the subject, in his letter to Mr. Gurley, of 
December last: — 



36 Slavery Q^uestion in Virginia. 

"In contemplating the pecuniary rcsonrces needed for the removal of such n num- 
ber to a great distance, my tlioughts and hopes have been long turned to the rich fund 
presented in the western lands of the nation, v-hich -will soon entirely cease to be under 
a pledge for another object. The great one in question is truly of a national charac- 
ter, and it is known that distini^ui^hed patriots not dwellijig in slave-holding States 
have viewed the object in that light, and would be willing to let the national domain 
be a resource in effecting it. Should it be remarked that the States, though all may 
be interested in relieving our country from tlie coloured population, are not ecjually so; 
it is but fair to recollect, that the sections m(-st to be benefitted are .those whose ces- 
sions created tlic fund to be disposed of. I am aware of the constitutional obstacle 
which has presented itself; but if the general Avill should shoidd be reconciled to an 
application of the territorial fund to the removal of the coloured j^opulation, a grant 
to Congress of the necessary authority could be carried, with little delay, through the 
forms of the Constitution." 

Before any one condemns us for looseness of construction of 
the Constitution, we beg further that he will read Mr. Jeflerson's 
letter to Mr. Sparks, (vol. iv. p. 38S-391.): we adopt all the 
qualifications therein mentioned. 

Judge Marshall most properly suggests that the objection, in a 
political view, to the application of this ample fund, is very much 
lessened, in his estimation, by the fact that our lands are becoming 
an object for whicii the States are to scramble, and which threat- 
ens to sow the seeds of discord among us, instead of being what 
they might be — a source of national wealth. 

A great part of tiie proceeds of the public domain once appro- 
priated to this object, there would soon be found no insurmount- 
able difficulty in the removal of the necessary number in Vir- 
ginia. But it is said that were Congress disposed to give a mil- 
lion annually for the specific object of the removal of the slaves, 
it would feel bound to bestow it proportionally on all the slave- 
holding States, or if all be not inclined to receive it, then on those 
which would be- We answer, that, if Congress should consent to 
pledge a certain share of the revenue from the lands for the pur- 
chase and removal (under the laws of the States) of the slaves of 
the United States, we have no doubt it would be thought wise to 
begin with the eflectual relief of the greatest sufl'erer first. A 
minute's attention to the following statement of General Brod- 
nax will show the immense claims of Virginia. 

"The State of Virginia contains, by the last census, less than one fifteenth part of 
the whole while population of the United States; it contains more, than one seventh of 
the free negroes ; and it possesses between a fourth and a fifth of all the slaves in the 
Union. 

"Virginia has a greater number of slaves than anj^ other State in the Union — and 
more than Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, all put together ; and 
more than four times as many as either of them. Louisiana and South Carolina are 
the only .States in which the slaves are more numerous than the white population; 
and Virginia has more slaves, without estimating her great and unfortunate proportion 
of free persons of colour, than both these States put together. Nay, one half of the 
State, that which lies on the east of the Blue Ridge of Mountains, itself contains 
nearly as many." 

But if Congress should decline to grant from this fund for the 
specific purpose of the removal of the blacks, and prefer to dis- 
tribute among tlie States the portion of money severally assign- 
able to them,- let such portion as would fall to Virginia be earn- 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 37 

estlv claimed of the Legislature for this object. The annual 
receipt of between two ami three hundred thousand dollars, 
which Mr. Clay's bill (limited to five years' duration) would as- 
sign to her, would not be adequate for compensating' masters on 
the foregoing plan, but it might suffice for doing an immense deal 
of good on the plan in Mr. Jefferson's letter to Mr. Sparks, the 
purchase of the children at a small but just price, the children to 
be disposed of either according to the particulars of that plan, or 
under any other plan which might be speedier, and less burden- 
some to the persons to be charged with rearing them. 

We believe that before half a million of blacks were conveyed 
to Africa, there would not remain a master obstinately resolved 
to retain his slaves, except in the most southern and south-western 
States, where slave labour is next to essential (we hope not abso- 
lutely) for the cultivation of the good lands! 

We exhort the people of Virginia then, first to seek aid from 
their own Legislature to the extent it can be afforded ; second, to 
insist on the passage of permanent laws going as far in the sub- 
ject as public opinion will justify ; and third, to assert their claims 
to a share of the proceeds of the public lands. Let it not, by 
her fastidiousness, be made true, that she ceded an empire to the 
General Government, under a virtual condition that she alone 
was to derive no benefit from it. 

Suppose then means to be thus found to defray the expense of 
emancipating and transporting them to some other country, the 
next .question is, where a suitable asylum maybe found to which 
to convey them.? We answer, that Africa affords the most eligi- 
ble situation for such an asylum, and that ^ve hope Virginia 
would avail herself of the noble beginning which has been made 
by the American Colonization Society at Liberia. We have thus 
reached our third division, in which we design to say, 

in. A Cew preliminary words on the position of the Coloni- 
zation Society with reference to the Virginia question, and then 
to show the possibility of finding a refuge for the blacks in Af- 
rica. 

Justice to the Society demands that it should be distinctly stat- 
ed, that it has no share whatever in the abolition question. Its 
whole sphere of operations is voluntary and peaceful ; it is no 
propagandist of agitating opinions. It has its own private, in- 
dependent course marked out, which it will pursue, though the 
abolition of slavery should never be mentioned again in any le- 
gislature. Let no adversary of abolition charge on it the odium 
(since with some it is odium) of that discussion any where. It 
has confined itself in all sincerity to the removal of free persons 
of colour (who may desire the same) to Africa, and to the prepa- 
ration of means for the reception there of such slaves as might 
be manumitted by their masters under the laws of the States. — 
Except by the peaceful and modest persuasive of the practicabili- 
ty of its kcheme, (now made manifest,) and the certainty of its 



38 Slavery (Question in T^irginia. 

easy adaptation to the largest possible demand, It hasnolhad, and 
never will have any agency in creating an inclination to aboli- 
tion. All such action, too, will plainly pass far beyond the 
limits of the Society's views. Indeed, in the midst of all the 
doubts and fears encompassing that subject, how naturally might 
both of the parties which contest it, turn their thoughts to that 
Society ! How soothing after the agitation of the momentous 
opinions which separate them from each other, is the invitation 
to peaceful concert which it holds out to them ! In the plan of 
this Society they can both find large room for the exercise of the 
patriotism they both boast. It may claim the ardent co-operation 
of persons of both opinions on the subject of abolition, without 
expecting those of either opinion to violate in the least their own 
consistency. Popular writers in Souih Carolina formerly de- 
clared that the Society would become the nucleus for all the 
mischievous incendiaries through the United States — now, it can 
with ease be demonstrated, that on a subject about which the 
public mind neither can, nor will be indiflerent, the only abso- 
lutely certain security against intemperance and rashness, is to 
be found in the scheme of that Society. The Incendiaries find it 
not at all suited to their taste. The Society was once denounced 
as hostile to the interests of the slave-holding States, and made up 
of meddling theorists, ignorant of the evil they sought to remedy: 
— now, it begins to be noted that it originated out of the passage, 
at different periods, of resolutions by the Virginia Legislature, 
projecting the identical scheme which the Society was establish- 
ed to promote. Formerly it was declared that the Society tam- 
pered with the public safety : what is the fact ? Why that the 
ver}' first mention of an American colony of emancipated negroes 
in Africa, was made in the Virginia Assembly, at a date which we 
beg every one to notice — it was in 1801. A plan for the acqui- 
sition of lands in Africa, for this pm-pose, was the result of the 
anxious secret sessions of the Assembly immediately subsequent 
to the rebellion of Gabriel ! In a word, it may be made manifest, 
that it is not only a safe, a wise, a practicable scheme, but that it 
was originally the deliberate policy of slave-holders, and is pecu- 
liarly fitted as a relief from exigencies of an alarming nature. — 
Give it then but the right to impute to any one a single senti- 
ment of patriotism in the range of the subject of slavery; give it 
but a concession oi one right idea in that man's reasoning on the 
probable future career of Virginia, and the society n)ay plant the 
foot of its rhetoric and its logic on these, so as to move the whole 
mass of his sentiments and opinions into subjection to itself. 
^ The history of the first suggestions about the expediency of a 
colony on the coast of Africa is briefly told. In the last century 
it was distinctly proposed by several individuals, and was even 
talked of, it is believed, in the Virginia Assembly. But its chief 
events are the resolutions of the sessions of that body in 1801—3, 
when the governor was desired to open a correspondence with 



Slavery Q^uestion in Virginia. ^9 

the president, on the means of finding an asylum in the European 
colonies already established, or of purchasing a suitable territory ; 
and the passage of similar resolutions in 1816, the correspondence 
under the former having proved fruitless. The direct object of 
these two attempts was the establishment of a colony under the 
proprietorship and dominion of Virginia, or of the United States. 
It was after this last attempt that it was suggested by certain phi- 
lanthropists, among whom Dr. Finley and Mr. Caldwell were 
most conspicuous, that the benevolent project would take a more 
vigorous beginning, and succeed better under the control of a 
private society, and thereupon the present Society was instituted 
at Washington, as the more convenient agent in the prosecution 
of the conception of the Virginia Assembly. 

The fixed object of the labours of the Society was at once de- 
clared to be the removal to Africa of the free blacks, with their 
own consent, and of such blacks, then slaves, as might after that 
time be set free, under the laws of the States. Were there no 
other object in view but the providing a foreign place of refuge 
for the existing class of free negroes, we are sure that that of 
itself would be found an end quite worthy of the labours of a So- 
ciety spread over the whole country ; and this chiefly as a mea- 
sure of police. So pernicious a class, (we admit many honourable 
exceptions^) the source of so much vice and the prey of so much 
misery, so beset with an inaptitude to habits of virtue, so tempt- 
ed to petty misdemeanors and so subject to be dragged into crime j 
a class so seemingly born for the rolls of vagrancy and the calen- 
dar of felonies, exists no where perhaps in the world. No wise 
government can, for a moment, regard the existence of such a 
class without uneasiness. We admit that the whites are under a 
sacred duty to them : one of two things must be done. Either 
their condition must be radically changed, and bettered, by the 
grant of such privileges in this country as may induce them to 
become useful citizens, or they must be prevailed on to accept 
elsewhere a home under a sky of more friendly influences. That 
the whites in the slave-holding States should ever consent to 
grant them here enough privileges to be a sufficient temptation 
to them to reform the character of their caste, is wholly improba- 
ble and unreasonable. It is true that in the domestic police of 
the West Indies, where they are highly privileged, it is thought 
they serve as a barrier class between the masters and slaves, to 
protect the masters ; but were we to give a list of their privileges 
there, it would go nigh to create a revulsion in the mind of the 
reader from all the humanity he at present feels towards the caste. 
The approach to equal rights with the whites, in some of the 
non-slave-holding States, has indisputably made them a more pes- 
tilent population in those States than elsewhere. In a memorial 
prepared by the Pennsylvania Colonization Society and present- 
ed to the Legislature of that State three or four years ago, (re- 
ferred to in an earlier number of this journal,) it is stated that of 



40 Slavery Question in Virginia. 

the whole population of Pennsylvania, then estimated at 1,200,000, 
about 40,000 or one thirtieth are people of colour; and the fol- 
lowing statement taken from the records of the State Penitentiary 
is then given : " in 1826, of 296 convicted and brought to the 
Philadelphia prison, 117 were coloured: being nearly in the ra- 
tio of 3 to 7. Had the number of coloured convicts been propor- 
tional to the coloured population of the State, there would have 
been but 6 instead of il7. Tlie average of tlie last seven years 
proves a similar disproportion." Nothing short of complete ci- 
tizenship can ever elevate them : but the danger of the example 
to our slaves is an insuperable barrier to this in the slave-holding 
States, and the strong disgust of nature every where absolutely 
forbids the thought in America. Elsewhere then, they must seek 
the advancement of their degraded condition. Their emigration 
from one Slate to another, already restricted, may one day be 
forbidden, and it is almost to be hoped it may. When once trans- 
ferred to another land where their freedom is no longer maim- 
ed and their privileges no longer ineffectual, they prove as fair 
subjects of moral and social discipline as thi? citizens of any go- 
vernment. 

There is however another branch of the Society's plan. Every 
one will observe how benignant and void of offence this first 
part of it is. The second, while it is of vaster compass, is equally 
harmless. It next fixes its view on such slaves as may be volun- 
tarily manumitted by their masters under the temptation of an 
opportunity to have them removed out of the United States, and 
most munificently provided for, on another soil. We think the So- 
ciety is most deeply indebted to JMr. Archer, for the support he 
lent it last winter, at its anniversary meeting. He n)ay rest assur- 
ed that he has not mistaken the neutral character of the Society in 
the midst of the troubled opinions of the times : that it attacks no 
man's conventional rights, and tramples on no pardonable preju- 
dices. It waits with patience the slow ripening of public opinion ; 
it prepares with quiet diligence a reservoir for the voluntary out- 
pourings of individual patriotism, and gathers up the random im- 
pulses of States and citizens into a concentrated impetus. Legis- 
latures may speak with the power of law, and statesmen may by 
their courageous eloquence hurry on the day of relief, but the 
most benign agent in behalf of master and slave will be acknow- 
ledged to be the unobtrusive Colonization Society to which they 
will ail turn in the moment of their success. In the end, that 
Institution shall have the benedictions of all, for it will have 
shown that " they also serve, who only stand and wait." Such 
(we have thought necessary to say,) is tlie position of the Society 
with reference to the abolition question. It now only remains 
to see w hether Virginia can avail herself of the labours of the So- 
ciety. The following details are, of course, familiar to every one 
who has given much attention to the reports of the Society; 
but in the hope that these pages may meet the eye of some who 



Slavery Question m Virginia. 41 

are yet unacquainted with the facts, we shall make a simple reci- 
tal of some of them. 

We will suppose every one persuarled that some point on the 
African coast is the best position for an asylum for the emanci- 
pated blacks. We will suppose too, that the appropriateness of 
our milking to Africa hersell" a tribute of the reparation which we 
design to render to humanity, is not merely a fanciful considera- 
tion. Although we are ready to admit that, should it seem ad- 
visable hereafter, other places in Africa or America may also be 
selected for colonizing them, we presume the policy of planting 
the first and largest colony in Africa will be conceded. There 
it will be distant enough (as it should be) from all possibility of 
intrusion from the whiles ; there it need neither dread the jea- 
lousy of civilized governmenls, nor can it become iiself, when 
grown to be a powerful nation, in any manner dangerous to the 
peace of the United States. To combine these qualities, we think 
no settlement of blacks can be planted any where at less expense, 
or in a happier position than at Liberia. 

The colony of Liberia extends about two hundred and eighty 
miles along the coast, and from twenty to thirty inland. It lies be- 
tween 4 (leg. 30 niin. and 7 deg. north latitude. This proximity to 
the eqii.itor by no means subjects it to a torrid climate ; on the con- 
trary, the climate is mild and uniform, the thermometer never be- 
ing lower than 68 (leg., nor iiiglur than 88 deg., save perhaps one 
day in the season, when it has been known to rise to 91 deg. To 
the health of the colony the managers have directed their chief 
thoi.tilits, and they exi^ress confidently the opinon that people of 
colour from most of the southern States will experience no serious 
injury from the African climate, and tliat such persons from any 
section of the' United States will soon be able to settle on the ele- 
vated lands of the interior, where there exist, it is believed, no spe- 
cial causes of di ease. The process of acclimation is gentle, fatal 
to comparatively few. The character of that climate, we are as- 
sured l)y those who know it best, is not well understood in other 
countries. Fatal as it may be to whites, its inhabitants are as ro- 
bust, as lie:;Iihy, as loig-lived to say the least, as those of any other 
country. Nothing like an epidemic has ever appeared in Liberia, 
nor is it learned from the natives that the calamity of a sweeping 
sickness ever yet visited this part of the continent. The mana- 
gers have of late sent out experienced physicians, supplies of me- 
dicines, appropriated a fund for the erection of a hospital, and ta- 
ken every measure which experience has suggested. The resi- 
dents of Liberia declare that " a more fertile soil, and a more 
productive country, so fir as it is cultivated, there is not on the 
face of the earth. Its hills and [dains are covered with a verdure 
that never fades : the productions of nature keep on in their 
giowlh through all the seasons of the year. Even the natives of 
the country, almost without farming utensils, without skill and 
with very little labour, make more grain and vegetables than they 
6 



42 Slavery Q^uesiion in Virginia. 

can consume, and often more than they can sell." All the best 
products of the tropics, with many others vvhicii are fiivonrites in 
temperate countries, flourish either spontaneously or under mode- 
rate labour. From the testimony of Englishmen we are assured 
that "the character of these industrious colonists is exceedingly 
correct and moral ; their minds strongly impressed with religious 
feelings ; their manners serious and decorous, and their domestic 
habits remarkably neat and comfortable." A sum of money has 
recently been given by a gentleman of New York to found a high 
school iJiere. A distinguished British naval officer has recently 
published his conviction, that the success which has attended the 
American colony in Africa is a complete proof that such experi- 
ments are not of a fanciful, or impracticable nature. Already are 
there about 2400 inhabitants in Liberia, of whom, (we have often 
been assured by voyagers thither,) not one repines at his condi- 
tion, or would consent to return to live in America. Preparations 
are on foot for a vastly increased body of settlers. It may be sa- 
tisfactory to compare the planting of Liberia with that of James- 
town. In the year 1624, after more than 150,000 pounds ster- 
ling had been expended, and more than 9,000 persons had been 
sent from England, its population did not exceed 1800 persons. 
From tables given in Mr. Jefferson's Notes, it appears that, after 
several fluctuations, sometimes rising as high as 400 and again 
sinking as low as 60, the whole number in 1618 (the eleventh 
year of the settlement) was only 600. So far then as the trial of 
the experiment of a negro colony was concerned, this is success 
— the most brilliant success. Those who were fearful of it from 
the analogy of the failure of Sierra Leone (a most remarkable 
instance certainly m the history of British enterprise, which, above 
all things, has succeeded in planting foreign colonies) may now 
dismiss all fear. The American negro, unchanged by the resi- 
dence of generations in America, has proved that in the native 
latitude of his ancestors he is for the first time at home, and, in 
the words of the same British officer, "the complete success of 
this colony is a proof that negroes are, by proper care and atten- 
tion, as susceptible of the habits of industry and the improvements 
of social life, as any other race of human beings." And this is 
our answer to all the theorizing on the principle of idleness being 
essentially dominant in the negro ; for the present settlers can 
hardly be said to be picked men. 

No one has been so irrational as to suppose that the business 
of planting colonies is an easy thing. We are not blind to the 
lessons that the many disastrous adventures in it have left in his- 
tory. The fatal errors which ruined the Duke de Choiseul's great 
expedition to Kourou, when 1000 or 1200 men, very much unpro- 
vided with the most common necessaries, and at the most rainy 
and unhealthy season, were sent out at once to people the im- 
mense deserts of French Guiana, are not very likelj' to be in- 
curred to-day. The most cautious and wary trial of the seasons, 
climate, soil, he, of Liberia, and of the fitness of negroes for the 



Slaver jf Question in Virgima. 43 

discipline of laws, has first been made ; repeated experiments 
have shown what sort of discipline must be used, what means 
each emigrant must bring witii him, and what habits he must be 
expected to adopt when arrived, to prevent his bringing the bur- 
den of pauperism on the colony. The prf>'ent selilemcnt vir- 
tuallv supports itself: the introduction of ntw settlers jiivvilves 
ail the expense to the Society. This may fairly be expected to 
be always the case. All the uncertainties relative to a country 
so different from our own, and so distant, have been explored by 
forerunners : we know what are the real dangers to be guarded 
against, and are not to be alarmed by unfounded imaginations. 
Besides, all the circumstances connected with the planting of co- 
lonies are not disadvantageous : Adam Smith, with his usual wis- 
dom remarks, that the colony of a civilized nation which takes 
possession of a waste country, for many causes is apt to advance 
more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human so- 
ciety. Nay, we do know that failure is not the certain issue 
even under the most sinister auspices. It was a fine idea of Mr. 
E. Everett's, when describing the landing of the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth from the May Flower, to suppose that a reader were 
to shut up the book after seeing this fated company debark, and 
conjecture the result : how soon and how naturally the political 
economist would have imagined their destruction ! Yet all calcu- 
lations were baffled, and the sons of those Pilgrims yet flourish 
in that bleak and stony region, with a prosperity healthier than 
the Salurnian earth itself ever gave. But, indeed, the political 
economist who should do Liberia the justice to survey it well, 
would pronounce that this colony cannot fail — every thing is in 
its favour, if there be but prudence. 

Still, tlie adversaries of abolition, incredulous, deny that the 
successful experiment of a small colony of American negroes af- 
fords sufficient grounds for the belief that it can be expanded into 
a populous State ; that by the admission of the Society itself its 
colony could not now receive the annual addition of 6000 with- 
out utter destruction, and that the area of the colonial territory 
could contain but a small part of the slave population of the 
United States. On the subject of these objections, we have taken 
means to procure the most authentic information of the views of 
the leading friends of the colony. The following particulars are 
so judicious and succinct that we give them in their original form : 
they are from the best source. 

"I have not a doubt that the Colony of Liberia can receive emigrants in any number 
which the Society, or the States, or 'the National Government may be able to trans- 
port. We have tlious;ht, it is true, that the slow growth of the Colony hitherto has 
been advantageous to it, but its affairs are now so settled and prosperous as to admit 
of a much larger annual accession to its numbers. Several thousands might now be 
annually colonized, provided some preparation were made for their reception by the 
erection of buildings for them, and some provision for their temporary support after 
their arrival. I would say that from ten to fifteen dollars would be enough to allow to 
each emigrant for such preparations and support. Perhaps no country is more pro- 
ductive and fertile than Liberia ; probably one hundred thousand people might derive 
their subsistence from the territory already purchased, and additional territory to any 
desu-able extent may be easily obtained* 



44 Slavery Q^uestioix in Virginia. 

"Suppose then we had $100,000 at command annually, it might all be judiciously 
expended in a single yeai" in removing emio:rants and in •preparing for the emij;iaius 
of fntui-e years. I should think tlie v^i-,isl course would be to send, say one thousand 
or fifteen hundred the first year, and double that number the next, and at the end of 
five years I should judge that ten thousand might be annually sent with advantage in 
every respect to the interests of the Colony. It would certainly be desirable to make 
some selection among those who might first offer, as much might depend on their cha- 
racter and habits. It may not be eisy to discriminate sufficiently in this maUer, and 
we must depend principally upon the moral means which may be set in operation in 
Liberia to improve and elevate the population. The new, circumstances, m which 
emigrants find themselves there, work remarkable and most favorable changes in their 
character. They give them enteriDrise, invention, self-rehance, and high purposes and 
hopes!" 

People ill the United States are hardly aware what degree of 
attention and admiration the founding of this colony has excited 
in Europe. We have ourselves the very best reason to know 
that extreme interest is ex ressed in its prospects by learned 
Professors and eminent Ministers of State in Germany. The 
Bulletins of the Geographical Society of Paris have often heralded 
the rising greatness of oin- little African republic, and paid some 
of the advocates of the Snciety the flattering compliment of trans- 
lating large extracts from their speeches. It is not long since the 
Chancellor of the British Exchequer, Lord Altliorp, declared in 
Parliament that he regarded the founding of Liberia as one of 
the most important events of the centur}^ It is impossible to 
mention without emotion the two next English names, whose 
approbation carries with it a blessing of great unction. The aged 
and venerable Thomas Clarkson is said to have listened to the 
details of the Society's operations with an enthusiabtic delight, 
such as he has not manifested for twenty years : he wrote to Mr. 
Cresson : " For myself I am free to say, that of ail things that 
have been going on in our favour since 1787, when the abolition 
cf the slave trade was first seriously proposed, that which Ts going 
on in the United Stales is the most important. It surpasses every 
thing which lias yet occurretl." And Mr. Wilberforce, a spirit 
coequal with Howard and the Premier name on the rolls of hu- 
manity when she speaks witii authority, (we mean when philan- 
thropy having taken its seat in parlianients and privy councils 
puts on the authoritative character of state polic},) Mr. Wiliier- 
force declares : "You have gladdened iTiy heart by convincing 
me that sanguine as had been my hopes of the happy eflects to 
be produced by your institution, all my a"^nticipations are scanty 
and cold compared wiih the realily. This may truly be deemed 
a pledge of the divine favour, and believe me no Briton, I had 
almost said no American, can lake a livelier interest than my- 
sell" in your true greatness and gloryv" Very handsome contri- 
butions to the Society's finids have also been made in England, 
chiefly by the Society of Friends, a body of people enviably dis- 
tinguished among religionists by the exclusive title of sp.claries of 
domestic freer! om. 

This colony thus cheered on by the enlightened sentiment of 
Europe, is obviously destined to prove the best means of putting 
an end to the African slave trade. The attempt to crush this 



Slavery Question in Virginia. 



45 



piracy bv guardian fleets on the coast has had but indifferent suc- 
cess. The whole number of Africans recaptured by tlie British 
cruisers from 1819 to 1828, was only 13,287, being on an average 
1400 per annum, wiiile tlie number kidnapped is supposed to 
have amounted to 100,000 yearly. The Brilisli oflicers have 
borne the mojJt honotu'able testimony to the great benefit render- 
ed to the service by the Colony of Liberia. For a great distance 
north and south of it, tlic trade is eflectually stopped, and this 
not merely by show of hostile interference, but by the surer 
measure of luring the natives to the more profitable business of 
peaceful commerce. Several powerful tribes have wholly re- 
nounced the trade of slaves, and have put themselves under the 
protection of the colony. The sole means of shuuing up for 
ever the gate of this satanic mischief, is the planting of a num- 
ber of Colonies of free American blacks along the coast; the ar- 
dent approbation and co-operation of England, France, and the 
Netherlands, may readily be had to give them security, and per- 
haps the Spanish Bourbons and the divided house of Braganza 
may one day be tempted to a show of a little good fiith in be- 
half of Africa, on this plan. England is fully sensible of the re- 
paration she owes to humanity for her deep participation in the 
Spanish Assiento, and for her having done her uliriost to render 
slavery immortal in these United States. Her unrelaxed inter- 
cession vvith all the European powers, and with the South Ame- 
rican, ever since the Congress of Vienna, to procure the extinc- 
tion of the slave trade, has gone far to redeem her, we admit, 
and will cover a multitude of sins of the Castlereagh policj:. All 
the other powers are likewise most deeply implicated in the com- 
plex guilt of that trade. 

But besides its agency in suppressing the slave trade, we are 
not ashamed to confess that we look on the hope of spreading 
civilization to a great extent around Liberia, perhaps the rege- 
neration of the whole western coast, by means of tins colony, as 
by no means chimerical. Who shall say that a colony of half a 
million of civilized black men in the centie of tlie west coast, 
(and we dare believe that not less will be the population of Li- 
beria and its sister settlements before (he close of the present 
century,) exhibiting to the nations about it the spectacle of a wt-II 
ordered Stale, owing its prosperity to the arts of peace, lo laws, 
and to religion, may not spread a peaceful influence, for Imn- 
dreds of leagues, never equalled in power by any impulse felt 
in any quarter of Africa, except in the propagation of IMa- 
hommedanisin by the sword? History and tradition give us to 
believe that the civilization of the world had its source in the 
heart of Africa : why may not the reverted current be poured 
into a land itself once pr«)lific of so benign a stream.'' Are not 
we, who are at this moment doubting of the possibilitv of civi- 
lizing a dark quarter of the world, ourselves an alien race, colo- 
nists on a land the farthest distant from the ancient seats of 
Christendom, which yet in the course of three centuries has be- 



46 Slavery Question in Virginia. 

come a continent redundant with civilization ? It was truly said 
at the Anniversary of .the Society in 1832, that a thousand in- 
struments for tiie difl'iision of improvement may now be employ- 
ed, which were unknovvn even at the time of the first founding 
of colonies on this continent. But all other hopes are feeble com- 
pared with a just reliance on the example of a large community 
of people of the same colour, the same descent, the same nature 
with the people of tlie Coast. Indeed, the Continent of Africa 
is, at the present day, before all others in the romantic interest it 
inspires. No speculation engages more cultivated minds than 
the Geography of the Interior, and no object is thought worthier 
of the sacrifice of precious lives, than its exploration for the sa- 
tisfaction of merely scientific curiosity. Who has not glowed 
with the enthusiasm of Herodotus, of Burckhart, of Denham, or 
with the humbler zeal of the Landers? Who has not brooded 
over the imagination of her vast deserts, her beautiful oases, her 
aromatic gales? Who has not grown romantic with thoughts of 
her gorgeous heavens, the tropical glory of her vegetable king- 
dom? Above all, who is a stranger to the uncertain image of her 
fabulous old waters? To sow the principal and mother elements 
of human life in this land, to found society, to introduce polity, 
religion, morals, and laws, and to plant the arts — why shall not 
this be the portion of our Colony? We believe, as firmly as that 
we now live, that at least the Coast of Guinea is, in no great 
lapse of time, to undergo a purification by the instrumentality of 
Liberia. The philosophic imagination loves to feast itself with 
these hopes, and to believe that, in a century perliaps, there shall 
be in the orphan homes of Western Africa, an odour richer than 
that mentioned in the divine lines of Milton, in one of those 
familiar geographical passages which it is always a charm to re- 
peat : — 

" Wlien to them who sail 



Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past 

Mozambic, off at sea norlh-east winds blow 

Sabean odours from the spicy shore 

Of Araby the blest ; with such delay 

Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league 

Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles." 

Should the day ever come, when, from the mouth of the 
Gambia to the equator, not a slave-market exists, but peace, good 
faith, commerce, and an increasing mental light have sway, then 
shall indeed the mariner, as he plies through these now infamous 
latitudes, slack his course, well pleased to join with the nations 
in the villages and the plains, in the solemn litany they ofTer to 
Heaven to deliver them for ever from the scourges they have 
escaped ! 

But a land dear to our hearts is too to be redeemed: it is our 
own native America, and first of all Virginia. If an exigency 
ever existed, and inducements to a step of deliverance were ever 
too forcible for reasonable men to withstand, that exigency and 
SBch inducements now stand clear in her view. But after all, it 



Slavery Q^uestion in Virginia. 



47 



has been asserted, that, te the present condition of Virginia bad 
as itmav, her very existence depends on retaimng her slaves : 
—that take but these away and she becomes desolate ! Are they 
indeed' essential to her existence, even though it be true that she 
never can prosper with them, and must deteriorate from day to 
day while she keeps them? Has she but one possible rnode of 
existence, and is she condemned to live out that through all its 
descending stages? Ruinous fatalism! Is it not, on the contrary, 
the exclamation of every observer, that no country in the world 
was ever more blessed than Virginia originally was: that the 
chief of her blessings being in their nature indestructible, (such 
as consist in the climate, Atlantic and central position, the num- 
ber, magnitude, and arrangement of rivers and their estuaries, 
natural adaptation to manufactures, &ic. Uc.) are not yet marred, 
and that others, (such as fine soil*, -Sic.) though greatly injured, 
may yet be considered reclaimable by the same system that 
makes the cold and rocky soils of New England as productive as 
the Delta of Egypt? "Eminent agriculturists have given the 
opinion that it is cheaper to reclaim reduced lands than to clear 
new ones. We shall never believe that Virginia would not have 
a thousand temptations for different sorts of emigrants, for capi- 
talists, for free labourers, and for her own sons who meditate 
emigration, were but measures resorted to to take the whole la- 
bour of the State out of the hands of slaves. Can any one make 
us believe that, with a free white population, the unparalleled 
facilities of water power on James river would not ere this have 
been made the means of fabricating manufactures to an amount 
greater than the whole product of tobacco of the State? But it 
is still maintained that Virginia can never draw the emigrants 
from other cuuntrie^ becau>;e her inducements can not be as 
great as those of the new States. A great deal might be said to 
show, that, in a balance between Virtiinia without slaves, and the 
untenanted quarters of the west without the blessings of human 
neighbourhood, without proximity to the sea, without markets, 
without the vicinity of the church, the school-house, the mill, 
the smith's shop, ^c. — not quite all the advantages are on the 
side of the west. It may be puerile to suppose, as each slave is 
withdrawn, that by any principle of population a freeman will 
lake his place: doubtless the tide of free labour would not in- 
stantly begin to flow in. But as soon as the operation of remo- 
val had taken an irrecoverable tendency towards its intended 
results, we dare believe that an adequate supply of free labour 
would be at hand-. Perhaps the whole amount of labour now 
done in the State could be performed by one third of the num- 
ber of white labourers. The question, whether free labourers 
would come, however, to supply the place of that of slaves, is 
solved with greater or less ease, according as it presumes that 
the abstraction of the slave is to be accompanied with compensa- 
tion to the master, procured from a source without the State, or 
that the master gives away his slave. Under the first presump- 



48 Slavery Questio7i in Virginia. 

tion the questi/;n solves itself. Under the second, .the V-hole question depends on one's 
opinion whether Virginia possesses any superior Capacities for the application of any 
extensive classes of industry. But of this we have already sufficiently treated under 
our first head. ■*. 

We leave this momentous question now with the people of the counties of Virgi- 
nia : it is for then to decide what effort they will make to diminish the evils of slave- 
ry among themselves. That slavery is not an evil to their prosperity they cannot, 
will not say. Will they say a remedy is impossible ? It is anything but impossi- 
ble — it tempts, lures them, and 'will force itself on t4iem. Will they say that the evil 
will cure itself? Il will nil cure iiself--it ravas,es with increasing violence, and there 
is no hope of its decrease, but from its soon reducing the energies of Virginia to such a 
state of imbecility as to be incapable of furnishing materiel for such an amount of evil. 
Let them not assent to the view of the eloquent iVir. Brown, {idmam noster essel) who 
seems to wish them to wait (some centuries!) mitil the Mississippi Vallej', now but 
sprinkled with population, is full, and tlieebb of population begins towards poor, ef- 
fete, decrepid Virginia. Will they say they areafraid tatouch the mighty evil — they 
leave it to their children ? They will have learnt what'^nist then be the heritage of 
their children. Or will they fold their arms in torpid inaitierence to the utmost depth 
of the calamities they provoke? Then we shall understand them ; they are prepar- 
ed, not merely for enduring the present evil, but fer that " worse," when the gloom of 
to-day shall thicken into a deep darkness,' and u})on that darkness shall rush down an 
awful cloud of domestic war, like another night shut in upon midnight ! 

To the young men of Virginia, who have lately pledged their future manhood and 
age to "the prosecution of this work of deliverance, we say, let them remember in the 
presence jOI what a h ist of witnesses their championsliip is to be exhibited. In a com- 
munity Where poi)ularity is essential to public usefulness, let them yet not lear, .est 
the p >pular favourdcsert them. Tne name of the Great rfemocrat is once more in the 
van : — t power that never failed in Virginia. Many indeed are the subjects of unhap- 
py conflict in the iJniied Stales, on wliich we have but too much reason to wish that 
Mr. Jelfjrson were slill alive lo give his umpirage. Lei us at least hail the unexpect- 
ed app.iarance, that offers guidance on this domestic theme, the greatest perhaps of 
all Let them be cheered by such auspices ; again, " he heads the flock of war." — 
But we s lould be disloyal to the grandeur of their cause, if we did not forearm them 
with fortitude to meet odium, to suffer desertion, and to bear with mortifying reverses 
of every shape. The cause is great enough to deserve these testimonies of its impor- 
tance. They have befv^re them no easy career, but their destiny to run it is tie n ere 
enviable. Let the words of Petrarch to Stepiien Col. nna sink into their heart of 
hearts: " few companions shall thou have by the better way: so much the more do 
I pray thee, gentle spirit, not to leave ofl'thy magnanimous undertaking." Or would 
the)'' man themselves to the proper pitch, with the w sdom of a better moralist than 
Petrarch, let them know : alii de vita, alii de gloria, et bentvolentia civium in discriniin 
vocantur. — Sunt ergo domesticee fortudines non inferiores fi^litaribus. (Cic; de Off. I. 
24, 22 ) 

AVhen, some years ago, upon a public occasion, a young Virginian* complained of 
the tone in which an American Senator boasted that he had read himself out of all ro- 
mantic notions on this subject, he venturtd to declare that might he but humbly sit at 
the feet of Charles Fox, and glow with kindred leeling to his, (for he was at no lime 
forgetful of the thought of giving freedom to the African, and spent his last breath in 
achieving the suppression of the slave trade, though V e bill received the royal signa- 
ture after his death,) he should not envy the American who was so very free of that 
fine enthusiasm Since that day it has been that Virginian's lot to stand at the grave 
of Fox, and had he dared attempt to chasten his feelings into a worthiness for the aus- 
pices he had thus chosen in his boyhood, he might have found a scene so literal as to 
starlle him I Tlirre may the foes and the friends of that great statesman see how the 
passi ms of transient events give way before the immortal essence of one deed for ge- 
neral humanity ! By his fo s let be forgotten the Coalition and the East India Bill ; 
by his parly friends, forgotten for a momenl the struggle to diminish the influence of 
the crown, and to upln.ld liberty under all the disgrace of the French excesses in her 
name. Belnld what ihe sculptor chooses, out of all Mr. Fox's claims to renown, to 
transmit to posterity ! He has carved the dying statesman ^»ecumbent on his tomb, 
and at his feet the most conspicuous figure is a liberated African on his knees, 
raising his shattered chains with clasped hand.s, and joining with his first hymn of 
freedom, a prayer to avert the death of the vindicator, assertor, liberalort of Africa. — 
To our mind, that is the most eloquent marble in WestminsteiF Abbey ! 

* African Repository, September, 1327. 

t The two former are titles given in the Civil Law to the advocates for liberty, when 
the right of any one to freedom was in suit. Hein. II. p. 381, ed. Dupin. 



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